L’amica geniale / My brilliant friend
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Autor:
Elena Ferrante
Country:
Italy (IT)
Book Theme:
Contemporary writers of your country
Publisher:
Edizioni e/o
Publishing Year:
2011
Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. Ferrante’s books, originally published in Italian, have been translated into many languages. Her four-book series of Neapolitan Novels are her most widely known works.
Ferrante is the author of three previous works of critically acclaimed fiction: The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, and The Lost Daughter. With this novel, already a bestseller in Europe, she proves herself to be one of Italy’s great storytellers. She has given her readers a masterfully plotted page-turner, abundant in its narrative details and characterizations, that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight her many fans and win new readers to her fiction.
National Award for Children’s and Young People’s
Abstract
The sense of guilt towards her own daughters, Nino’s infidelity and his unclear relationship with his wife, the judgment of her ex-husband and his influential family, are all elements that give her no respite. Even missing Lila is a burden that she can no longer handle, despite all the problems and quarrels. She becomes
pregnant with a baby girl and returns with Nino to Naples hoping he will leave his wife for her. It will never happen, rather Lenù finds herself alone again in the family home where she lived as a child, abandoned by her daughters who prefer the luxuries and lifestyle offered by their father, while violence and deaths intertwine around her.
Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country undergoing momentous change. The first in a trilogy, My Brilliant Friend introduces readers to two unforgettable protagonists and to the famed and flawed beauty of modern Naples.
The little girl takes her name from a Lenuccia doll that in the past, out of spite, Lila threw into the basement. Lila doesn’t have Lenù’s education, yet she remains her lifeline.The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets, Elena and Lila learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other.
This sequence is a delight in the TV adaptation, too.
