My Brilliant Friend

• By

• 
  

• Elena Ferrante

I would choose more than one of the books I read recently to be “TheBest Book in the 21st Century” before “My Brilliant Friend”.

Four stars out of Five stars

Earlier in the year, my son sent me the list of “Best books of the 21st century”, as voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff ofThe New York Times Book Review.

The first on the list is “My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante.  I was tempted to read it after I finished reading “Atoms in the Family.”  However, when I found out that it was one of the four books in the series named Neopolitian novels, I hesitated

After some searching, it turns out that each of the novels is self-contained and it is not necessary to read all four,  I decided it would be interesting to experience what reading the best book of the century was like. 

The author is Elena Ferrante, an Italian Lady.  It was translated to English by Ann Goldstein.  It is 351 pages long.  A book of this length usually takes me no more than a week to read.  This one, however, took much longer.

It gives me no pleasure to say that I found the first half of the book rather boring.  In the inside of the cover page, there is a statement, presumably by the publisher, which states that “Ferrante gives her readers the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country undergoing momentous change.”

The novel is about the friendship of two females, Elena (the narrator) and Lila, the friend, from the time they were about four years old to about sixteen, when Lila got married.  In addition to their feelings, emotions, opinions in the different periods, the author described the personalities of several families in a poor and supposedly violent neighborhood of Naples.  She did not shy from recounting episodes and rumors which were embarrassing to her.  There were, however, not much description about what momentous change took place in the neighborhood or the city, and hardly any of the country.  Only one really violent event occurred: a murder.  The victim was depicted as someone hated and despised by almost everyone, but there was hardly any description of any actual behavior that supported such contempt.

In most books I read, I usually found some quotes about the human condition, including humorous ones as well as wise ones that may serve as guides in our daily lives.  In this book, the following quote about religion is the only one that may fall in this category.   The quote, from the high school student Elena speaking to her teacher in a religious class, was truly remarkable:

“…the human condition was so obviously exposed to the blind fury of chance that to trust in a God, a Jesus, the Holy Spirit – this last a completely superfluous entity, it was there to make up a trinity, notoriously nobler than the mere binomial father-son –was the same thing as collecting trading cards while the city burns in the fires of hell.”

The quote will likely resonate with some, but it certainly will enrage many others:

In conclusion, I would choose more than one of the books I read recently to be “The Best Book in the 21st Century” before “My Brilliant Friend”.