Rating: 1/5

Even an accidental perfume spillage couldn’t save this book for me

My first blog review encounters a serious hiccup – what happens when you really don’t like a book you’ve read and don’t know why?

I persevered with Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend as it was the choice for this month at my local book club. Even so, this is a book I’d had on my radar for a while, as contemporary female fiction is usually my thing (presuming Elena Ferrante really is a woman as her pseudonym suggests – no one really knows). I’m not daunted by reading a translated book either, and would even like to read more. So why was this much lauded book 331 pages of sheer torture for me?

I hoped that attending the Gloucester Book Club meeting would help solidify some of my thoughts. The meeting was great as always, with questions and context to help draw out our responses to the story. We learnt about some of the history of Naples where the book is set, (although for me the adage ‘see Naples and die’ took a new meaning when slogging through this book!) and I was encouraged to hear that everyone had struggled with the book’s dense sentences and provincial plot initially. However, unlike me, each other member had had their ‘aha!’ moment at some point in the book, when they became intoxicated with Ferrante’s storytelling, and even looked forward to reading or hearing about the next three (!) books in her Neopolitan quartet. It was said that listening to the audiobook or watching the recent HBO adaptation of the novels helped other members fall in love with the world of Lila and Lenu, but based on how I felt about the novel itself I’m not willing to risk it.

The cover was the most interesting thing about this book, and even that was dull

What was missing for me in this book was ironicially what the narrating character Lenu discovers for herself more and more as the novel progresses, both in pursuit of academic excellence, and also most vividly whilst reading on the beaches of Ischia, where she feels as if she’s “dissolving into the pages like a jellyfish” (pg 281). Although I see a lot of myself in Lenu, and can empathise with the conflict of love versus envy when compared next to ‘brilliant’ female friends in a patriarchal world that only allows a set amount of space for women, I feel like Ferrante keeps telling us that My Brilliant Friend will be an important coming-of-age story without actually substantiating that claim with a sustained narrative interest beyond a few beautifully crafted passages.

The only moment that really melted my heart (and saved the book from a 0 star rating!) comes when Lenu is bathing Lila in preparation for her wedding. The two girls are still only 16, but Lenu broods like a scorned woman as she ceremoniously cleans her subject of her affections with as much adoration as she can, knowing that all her efforts will only lead to Lila’s future husband Stefano ‘sully[ing] her in the course of the night’ (pg 313). Lenu too feels that her high-school experience has been ‘sullied’ by the dawning realisation that no matter how much she studies, she will never truly experience the praise from their neighbourhood in the same way that Lila, the beautiful teenage virgin, is now experiencing through her wedding ritual.

The heartbreaking moment comes as Lila replies to Lenu’s dejected ‘thanks, but at a certain point school is over’ with ‘Not for you: you’re my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls’ (pg 312). My heart breaks at the assumption that until that point in the book I had no doubt that Lila was the eponymous ‘brilliant friend’ of the title. The revelation that Lenu’s obsession is not a one-sided adolescent fantasy, but a mutual and reciprocated devotion, is a rare moment of tenderness that is glossed over again with wedding itself and the completely banal ending of the novel (spoiler: the big ending is the local big shot swans in wearing some shoes he’s not meant to have on. No – really).

I credit my study of literature at university for my ability to dissect a book at length, but also for my frustrating inability to like or dislike a book for with no obvious reason other than personal taste. When it’s been drummed in to you to back up every opinion with substantial evidence from the text for 4 years, reading and reviewing for pleasure afterwards is a difficult transition. What I will say about this book is the long sentences, overbearing detail, realism, moralistic tone, and extensive cast of characters in My Brilliant Friend reminded me of a Dickens novel. Whilst that might be high praise for many – I personally can’t stand a Dickens novel.

Are there any critically well-reviewed books that you wanted to like but actually struggled to enjoy? Please let me know in the comments section! Zoe x