Service95 Recommends is the home of the books we love and reviews from our contributors. In My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, two women embody the changes of a nation.
What Paul Murray Says: “Ferrante’s sublime Neapolitan quartet, of which this is the first part, is driven by the fissile friendship between studious, dutiful Lenu and mercurial, prodigious Lina. Everything is so vivid here – the dank, claustrophobic neighbourhood where the girls live, the oddities, lushes, priests and crooks who inhabit it, the twists and turns of adolescence. But it’s the relationship between the two girls – Lenu’s burning, impossible desire to be Lina, Lina’s need to break free from every conceivable restriction on her – that gives their coming-of-age the dimensions of Shakespearean tragedy.”
What They Say: “To the uninitiated, Elena Ferrante is best described as Balzac meets The Sopranos and rewrites feminist theory.” – The Times
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