My Brilliant Friend

by Elena Ferrante

Europa     2012
331 Pages    Literary Fiction

My Brilliant Friend was a Christmas gift from my brilliant childhood friend, and I have been obsessed with it for several days. Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym for an Italian author, and there are four books in her Neapolitan Series about the lifelong friendship between two girls. Lila and Elena. The fourth book in the series, The Story of The Lost Child, was named one of the 10 best books of 2015 by the New York Times.

My Brilliant Friend is told by Elena, and most of it focuses on her relationship with Lila, beginning when they become friends in first grade until they are about 17. Lila is the daughter of a shoemaker; Elena's father is a porter at city hall. These are the years immediately following World War II, and times are tough. The girls live in a poor neighborhood of Naples, where work is valued and education is not. Elena is enamored with Lila, who is scrappy and independent, while she, on the other hand, is obedient and studious. Both girls are very bright and competitive at school. Both love learning. Both are the products of their environments.

  

Slowly the economy of Naples picks up and the lives of the families improves. We begin to understand that Elena will become educated and Lila will be stuck in the neighborhood, working as a cobbler in her father's shop. As Lila matures she becomes very beautiful and loved by the neighborhood boys, while Elena remains dumpy and studious. Lila is the litmus test for all of Elena's aspirations; she must bounce all the events of her life off Lila. Lila, on the other hand, wants to learn so badly that she becomes Elena's tutor by getting books out of the library to learn the same things Elena is learning. The elementary school teacher encourages both girls, but it is only Elena who remains in school.

Nothing much out of the ordinary happens, but the book is so brilliantly written that the reader hangs on every word. As I was reading My Brilliant Friend, I kept asking myself the question—"What is so compelling about this book?"  The New Yorker calls Ferrante's books "remarkable, lucid, austerely honest." Another word often used in reviews of this book is bildungsroman.  I had to look that one up—it means a novel dealing with one person's formative years or spiritual education. And indeed, that comprises the majority of the book, but we are only privvy to Elena's inner thoughts, and not Lila's. We only see Lila through Elena's eyes, and we witness the enormous changes happening to the lives of the girls as they reach adulthood. There are so many characters in the book that there is a index of characters at the beginning of the book, and believe me, I had to look at it frequently.

There is so much that women can relate to in this novel—best friends, dolls, puberty, the arrival of boys in a girl's life, and finally separation as the young women follow their separate destinies. In some ways, the book reminded me of West Side Story—the gritty neighborhood, the posturing boys trying to be men, the dialect of the street, the loss of opportunity. What Elena has that everyone else lacks is the chance for an education, which will in later volumes, take her away from the neighborhood.

As I was reading, I remembered acutely my 13-year-old daughter being told by her best friend of 6 years that they couldn't be friends anymore because they had "nothing in common." My daughter was crushed. I told her that she and her friend had everything in common and her friend would come back to her. That is what happened, and they remain friends to this day. This is the type of friendship that Elena and Lila would understand.

Then, of course, we must mention the mysterious author, Elena Ferrante. This picture, which I found on Google, may or may not be Ferrante. She chooses to remain anonymous because she feels that novels should stand on their own without the insertion of the author's personality. All interviews are done in writing. We must also consider the masterful translator, Ann Goldstein. This book would not have been quite so powerfully appealing without such a great translation.

I highly recommend My Brilliant Friend. I will soon begin book two, The Story of a New Name. In an interview with the New York Times, Ferrante said that she considers herself a storyteller first. I am eager to continue the story.

The New Yorker review of Ferante's books.

The interview in the New York Times.

Best Books of the Year 2016

Here is a list of my favorites of 2016.You will see some of these on other "best of" lists but some of them are unique to my life situation. Have you read any of these?

Mystery

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley. This was by far the best mystery I read all year.  I read it pre-publication but it showed up on most of the "best of" lists for the year.

Literary

My Brilliant Friend by the mysterious Elena Ferrante. The first book I read in the new year, given to me by a friend. What a furor this series has caused. Well worth reading.

Zero K by Don DeLillo was the first DeLillo book I have read. It is a meditation on death written in DeLillo's signature bleak language.

A Covenant with Death   by Stephen Becker. This was a reissue of a novel from the 1960s, and it is a meditation on the nature of justice and of capital punishment.

YA

The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton. This is a lovely coming of age story not billed as YA, but certainly appropriate for teenagers. Just about my favorite book of the year.

Every Exquisite Thing by Matthew Quick tackles teenage anxiety in literary fashion. 

Historical Fiction

Last Days of Night by Graham Moore tells the story of the feud between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Nickola Tesla and a host of other characters enrich an exciting conflict.

Children

The Journey  by Francesca Sanna is much more than a children's book. It's timeliness regarding the plight of the refugees has influenced my thought every day.

Horror/SciFi

Slade House   by David Mitchell is not an important book but it is a great diversion. Totally fun.

Nonfiction

Between the World and Me by Ta'Nehisi Coates is one of the most important books of the year. An explanation of how to live as a Black man.

The Nordic Theory of Everything  by Anu Partanen. I read this in preparation for my June trip to Norway. A fun read.

   Memoir

My life on the Road by Gloria Steinem is the iconic woman's memoir. Important to the political discussions of this year.

You'll Grow Out of It  by Jessi Klein is a memoir in essay/ storytelling style. Totally fun read.

Most Hated

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up  by Marie Kondo. Frankly, I hated every moment of this smug look at my clutter. Unlike what many of Kondo's advocates told me, it did not change my life.

In the Margins: on the Pleasures of Reading and Writing

 By Elena Ferrante

Translated by Ann Goldstein

Europa Editions 2022

111 pages     Essays

We do not know exactly who Elena Ferrante is, except that she is a gifted writer. In 2020, she wrote some lectures that were intended to be read by actors, not the author herself. She remains anonymous, but we learn a little more about her writing style in these four essays, aptly named In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing. 

She discusses the difficulties of growing up female and trying to compete in the male-dominated literary scene. She says, “I had to write like a man, staying strictly within the male tradition: although a woman, I couldn’t write like a woman except by violating what I was diligently trying to learn from the male tradition.” It wasn’t until she read Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas that she affirmed her voice as a female writer.

This very much reminded me of a paper I wrote for a philosophy class my senior year of university, probably 1965. The professor gave me an A+ on the paper and wrote, “Now you are starting to think like a man” on the paper’s margins. While I appreciated the A+, I was deeply offended by the comment. Because Ferrante must be about my age, I was able to understand her perturbation about trying to find her own voice as a writer.

The essays are a bit meandering. However, I really appreciated the essay that she calls, Histories I. This is where the reader comes to understand Ferrante’s skill as a writer telling the story of women’s lives and the challenges female authors face. She closes this essay by saying, “ I believe that the pure and simple joining of the female ‘I’ to History changes history.” She is proud that no one can now say of her writing that finally she is thinking like a man.

The reviewer in The Guardian writes, “The book feels uneven, tantalising in places, opaque in others. Her ideas can be distilled down into: powerful prose emerges from dutiful prose; all writing is built on the shoulders of great literature; the paradox of realism is it requires truthful lies; and it’s a real bitch to get what’s in your head on to the page.” 

Although I read My Brilliant Friend and watched the first season on HBO, that is the only Ferrante that I have read or watched. I may go back now and read her latest novel, The Lying Life of Adults, which has lingered on my Kindle for a couple of years.

In the Margins is an excellent footnote on the art of writing, and the skill that a woman writer must develop. Besides that, focus on the incredible book cover. The cover highlights and explains the book's contents explicitly. 

Gilead

By Marilynne Robinson

New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Week 36     Spiritual

When the Rev. John Ames was in his late 60s, he was given a second chance at life. He married a much younger woman and became a parent. At 76, he receives a diagnosis that his heart is failing, and he realizes that he will not live long enough to see his son, now 6, grow up. The book Gilead is his rambling musings on his life, his ancestry, and the lessons he wants his son to learn. He says to his son, “How I wish that you could have known me in my strength.”

John Ames grew up in Gilead, Iowa and remained there to pastor the church that his father pastored. That does not make him a country bumpkin by any means; he is educated and cultured and finds beauty and truth in the Iowa countryside. His best friend is Broughton, a Presbyterian minister, who grew up with John and spent his entire career in Gilead, as well. They spend many hours ruminating on faith and on life, but Broughton has the discouragement of knowing that his son, John (named after his friend) is a prodigal. John Ames Broughton returns home for a visit and his presence is a vexation to the protagonist, John, as he is writing down his thoughts.

And that is about the sum of the plot of the book. Like The Elegance of the Hedgehog, this book is not about plot. As a matter of fact, it is very similar to The Elegance of the Hedgehog in that explores the inner workings of the human mind with all its foibles. John’s son would know these foibles and these thoughts if he would be able to know his father long enough to ask the questions, but John is sure that he will not live that long. Consequently, John tries to imbue his theology into his son through small sermons, like the following. “So my advice is this—don’t look for proofs. Don’t bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they’re always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp. And they will likely sound wrong to you even if you convince someone else with them.”

Marilynne Robinson has truly written a masterpiece. In fact, it won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for literature. Imbued with scriptural parallels, the book portrays a man at peace with his life, still enthralled with the tasks of the ministry, hopeful for the future, and comfortable with the thought of his own mortality. Robinson is very comfortable with scripture herself, and none of the references –scriptural or theological—seemed forced or contrived. Because she wrote the book in short burst-like journal entries, the reader is able to read a section and ponder it a bit. I found myself underlining whole passages because of their truth or their beauty. In that way, although it is fiction, it is a spiritual book in the purest sense of the term. Robinson affirms the power of the sacred in the small details of the book as well as in the grander expository passages. One knows the very soul of the Rev. John Ames, loves him, and affirms the faith he espouses. Yet, as the reviewer in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution comments, “Readers with no interest in religion will find pleasure in this hymn to existence. It is a story that captures the splendors and pitfalls of being alive, viewed through the prism of how soon it all ends.”

My grandfather, the Rev. Edward Stodghill, began his career as a Methodist minister in rural Iowa and throughout the book I saw my grandfather, tall, thin, white-haired, with the mellifluous voice of an actor, speaking poetry from the pulpit. He took the visual place for the Rev. John Ames in my mind. My grandfather had the same educated, gentle spirit as John Ames, and the same grace-filled attitude toward people and religion. The book had a double impact for me because it brought my grandfather back to me.

I do not know why I had not read this book before, but I would highly recommend it. It will fill your soul with the goodness of a very human but very spirit-filled man.

A brilliant review of Gilead and interview with the author in 2004:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/11/gilead-apos-s-balm/3644/

Audio interview with Terry Gross on PBS about Gilead:

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=4490635&m=4490636

A Girl Returned

By Donatella Di Pietrantonio

Translated by Ann Goldstein

Europa Editions     2019

170 pages     Literary

A Girl Returned is the totally spellbinding coming-of-age story of a 13-year-old, unnamed Italian girl, who is forced to leave the home in which she was raised and return to her birth family—a family that she has never met. She is left totally in the dark as to why this is happening; she believes that the woman who raised her is dying and that is why she has to leave.

The couple who raised her had considerable money; the family she is returned to is very poor. There are several children; three teenaged boys, a younger girl, and a baby. She cannot bring herself to call the woman “mother”, so she refers to her as “the mother.” Everyone is under lots of economic and emotional stress; the children have a great deal of work that they must do every day; and the parents treat the children with little respect and the back of the hand.

Luckily two of her new-found siblings welcome her into their lives. Vincenzo, the oldest son, and Adriana, the younger sister guide her through the transition, although Vincenzo dies unexpectedly midway through the narrative. The girl strives to gain a foothold in life, but she never stops trying to figure out what happened to her city mother, and the reason she was A Girl Returned is heartbreaking.

The girl suffers greatly from the loss of place—the loss of self. At one point she says, “I was an orphan with two living mothers. One had given me up with her milk still on my tongue; the other had given me back at the age of thirteen. I was a child of separations, false or unspoken kinships, distances. I no longer knew who I came from. In my heart, I don’t know even now.” Yet, despite the anguish, she prevails, growing strong and resilient. Her spirit is indominable.

A Girl Returned is beautifully written and artfully translated. Ann Goldstein, the translator, also translated the Neapolitan Series of books by Elena Ferrante, and this book has somewhat the same feel. More than just another Italian novel, A Girl Returned explores some of the same family dynamics as well as some of the same scenery and story pacing.

I was entranced by the review in the Washington Post. The reviewer praises the author for her storytelling skills, her humor, and the way that “she knows just when and where to slip the pieces of her jigsaw into place — all while leaving emotional gaps, psychic wounds that can never heal.”

Lest the reader worry that this book may be too heavy a summer read, please be assured that it is less than 200 pages and it moves very quickly. Sad and heart-warming all at the same time. If you loved My Brilliant Friend, you will love A Girl Returned.

A Sister's Story

 By Donatella Di Pietrantonio

Translated by Ann Goldstein

Europa Editions      2022

167 pages     Literary

It has been several days of beach living since I finished reading A Sister’s Story, but the emotional impact lingers. The narration is told in the first person by one sister ostensibly about the other sister, written years after the events being described. It is the story of memory but primarily the story of pain and sorrow with very little redemptive joy.

Here is the synopsis: "It’s the darkest time of night. Adriana, a baby in her arms, hammers on her sister's door. Who is she running from? What uncomfortable truth is she carrying with her? Like a whirlwind, Adriana upends her sister’s life bringing chaos and cataclysmic revelations.

Years later, the narrator gets an unexpected, urgent summons back to Pescara, her hometown. She embarks on a long journey through the night, and through the folds and twists of her memory, from her and her sister’s youth, their loves and losses, secrets and regrets. Back in Borgo Sud, the town’s fishermen’s quarter, in that impenetrable yet welcoming microcosm, she will discover what really happened, and attempt to make peace with the past.

Donatella Di Pietrantonio, expert chronicler of the bonds between mothers and daughters, revisits the places and characters of A Girl Returned with a moving novel focused on the ambivalent, ambiguous, wavering but steadfast relationship between sisters."

A quote early in the novel explains the sibling relationship: “ As children we were inseparable, then we had learned to lose each other. She could leave me without news of herself for months, but it had never been this long. She seemed to obey a nomadic instinct; when a place no longer suited her, she abandoned it. Every so often our mother said to her: ‘you’re a Gypsy.’ Later I was, too, in another way.” With few characters and minimal plot, the relationship is explained and exploited.

The novel was translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, the translator of My Brilliant Friend and the other books in the series by Elena Ferrante. Although the style of writing is quite different, the themes bear some similarity. One reviewer said, “A Sister’s Story carries the same message of the greatest Italian literature of the 20^th century. . .a message at once tragic and hopeful—that while suffering may be an inevitable part of life, we can choose not to let it define us.”

One of DiPietrantonio’s unique gifts is the ability to sum up a situation with eloquent, meaningful narration. For example, at the mother’s funeral, the narrator muses: “We looked at each other; not even the bass drum of the band had ever produced the din that our mother drew down from the sky at her funeral.” I instantly understood the emotion.

Fortunately the novel is short. I would have been hard pressed to deal with all the negative situations and pressured emotions if it had been longer. I do believe that A Sister’s Story helps describe complex family relationships. Be prepared to be moved.

Neon in Daylight

by Hermione Hoby

Catapult     2018

284 pages    Literary Fiction

 

Neon in daylight is a

Great pleasure 

(Frank O’Hara)

Kate arrived in New York from England to the apartment of her mother’s friend during the extremely hot summer of 2012.  Ostensibly Kate is there to take care of the friend’s cat, but more purposefully (or not) to find herself. She is in the midst of finishing her PhD and may be trying to get away from a disappointing relationship. Her mother’s friend had said to her, “Oh, my god, your mom and I had such adventures when we were your age. Because you gotta travel! You gotta live, you know?”

“And Kate didn’t know. Didn’t know what live meant, in this context.” 

Inez, a teenager who has just graduated from high school meets Kate in the unlikeliest of places, a bodega in the neighborhood. Inez is also at loose ends. Her divorced parents want her to go to college, but she can’t see herself there. She has picked a couple of highly unlikely ways to earn money—selling Aderall on the street and satisfying men’s sexual fantasies. Inez becomes Kate’s summer friend by inviting her to the frantic and frenetic activities of New York’s teenage scene.

Bill plays the pivotal role in the unfolding drama. As a young man, Bill wrote a coming-of-age novel—a kind of Catcher in the Rye—and he has lived off the proceeds of the novel and the ensuing movie into middle age. He teaches creative writing, is a purposeless drunk, and is also Inez’s father.

The plot, such as it is, focuses on these three and the intersection of their lives. Because of the skillfully drawn narrative, the reader doesn’t question the logic about how these three find each other in the midst of America’s largest city. Kate doesn’t realize that Inez is Bill’s daughter until late in the book, but she never mentions to Inez that she is having an affair with an older man. Inez never mentions her father’s name to Kate, and Bill never mentions to his daughter that he has met a young woman named Kate. There is a constant state of ennui that engulfs all the characters. 

Meanwhile, the city of New York chugs on and on. It is alive and vibrant in ways that the characters are not. My favorite scene happens when Kate follows a man lugging a grand piano into Washington Square Park, where he sits down and begins to play Rachmaninoff. The city is so skillfully drawn that it becomes a major player in the story, as is the heat of the summer of 2012. As the narrative ends, Hurricane Sandy is drawing nigh at the same time there is some resolution in the relationships between the three main characters. As the city gears up for the rapidly-approaching hurricane, the book ends—the only triumph being the triumphant city. The New York Times reviewer says, “We can see what these characters cannot. Their lives seem so particular, so painful and noisy to them. But under the city’s “merciless” skyline, in the wake of a hurricane, how similar they suddenly are, how small, how human.” 

One reviewer says “that sentiment—the way unlikelihood fosters a sense of inevitability—is the book’s engine.” None of the characters are particularly likeable, but that is not the author’s purpose. Both the reviews in the New York Times and the LA Review of Books praise Hoby’s talent, her observational ability, and her gift of language. It is a brilliant first novel.

Here is a charming interview with Hermione Hoby on the Shelf Awareness website. Scroll down to find it.