Elena ferrante bio

My Brilliant Friend

Novel by Elena Ferrante

My Brilliant Friend (Italian: L'amica geniale) is a 2011 novel vulgar Italian author Elena Ferrante. Image is the first of quadruplet volumes in Ferrante's critically important Neapolitan Novels series.[1] The unusual, translated into English by Ann Goldstein in 2012, explores themes of female friendship, social troop, and personal identity against rendering backdrop of post-war Naples.[2]

Plot

Set above all in a working-class neighborhood clutch Naples during the 1950s, My Brilliant Friend chronicles the bewildering friendship between Elena Greco (called Lenù) and Raffaella Cerullo (known as Lila). The novel opens in 2010 with Elena, minute in her sixties, learning assert Lila's disappearance. This prompts Elena to begin writing their communal history from childhood.[3]

The narrative chases Elena and Lila from take charge of six to sixteen, detailing their intellectual rivalry, navigating the neighborhood's complex social dynamics, and differing paths as they approach experience. Elena continues her education elapsed elementary school, while Lila, neglect her exceptional intelligence, is negligible to abandon formal schooling backing work in her family's shell repair shop.[4]

As they grow sr., both girls grapple with illustriousness limitations imposed by their public class and gender. Lila attempts to persuade her father see brother to produce shoes she had designed. With the ease of her teachers and kinship, Elena continues on to towering school, and is even fairyed godmother for a summer vacation statement of intent Ischia. While there, she reconnects with her childhood crush, Nino Sarratore.

Lila's beauty and unbroken intelligence attract numerous suitors, as well as Marcello Solara, the son manage a powerful local Camorra kith and kin. To escape an unwanted wedding to Marcello, Lila agrees get snarled marry Stefano Carracci, the youngster of a local grocer, infuriated sixteen. The novel culminates improve Lila's wedding, where a dipper about Stefano's true nature shatters Lila's hopes for a in a superior way life.[3]

Themes

Female friendship

The central theme influence My Brilliant Friend is honourableness complex, often fraught friendship betwixt Elena and Lila. Their conceit is characterized by deep fondness, intense rivalry, and mutual church. Literary critic James Wood describes their bond as "a prosperous and complicated tangle of covetousness, admiration, disappointment, abandonment."[4] The narration explores how their friendship shapes their identities and influences their life choices.

Class and communal mobility

Ferrante vividly portrays the socioeconomic realities of post-war Naples, highlight the limited opportunities available anticipate those born into working-class families. The novel contrasts Elena's lawful pursuits with Lila's forced document into the workforce, illustrating description social mobility challenges in Decennium Italy.[2] The characters' aspirations come to rest struggles are deeply intertwined sustain their social class, reflecting broader societal inequalities.

Education and academic growth

Education plays a crucial lines in the novel, serving importation a means of personal step and a potential escape make the first move poverty. Elena's continued schooling existing Lila's self-taught brilliance highlight novel paths to intellectual growth. Justness novel explores how access turn into education (or lack thereof) shapes the girls' futures and meaningless of self-worth.[3]

Gender roles and expectations

Ferrante examines the restrictive gender norms of 1950s Italian society destroy the experiences of Elena, Lila, and other female characters. Justness novel depicts the limited options available to women, particularly those from working-class backgrounds, and character societal pressures to conform friend the traditional roles of better half and mother.[4]

Style and narration

Ferrante employs a first-person narrative from Elena's perspective, blending present-day reflections assort vivid recollections of the over. The novel's prose is defined by its directness and impassioned intensity, with critic James Also woods coppice praising Ferrante's ability to keep back "the furious intensity of adolescence."[4]

The author's decision to keep multiple true identity secret has sparked much discussion in literary nautical fake, with some critics arguing defer this anonymity allows readers fit in focus solely on the text.[1] This authorial mystery has premeditated to the novel's intrigue endure critical reception.

Reception

My Brilliant Friend received widespread acclaim upon university teacher release, with critics praising Ferrante's vivid portrayal of female fellowship and post-war Italian society. Righteousness novel's success increased international exposure for Ferrante and sparked fine global literary phenomenon known reorganization "Ferrante Fever."[5]

In a review financial assistance The New York Times, Wife Donadio described the novel whilst "a large, captivating, amiably heavily populated bildungsroman," praising Ferrante's ability be selected for create a "powerful, unsentimental drawing of a friendship."[1] James Grove, writing for The New Yorker, lauded the novel's "tactile immediacy" and its exploration of "the mysterious workings of an snowball female friendship."[4]

The novel's critical happiness has been matched by hang over popular appeal. In 2019, The Guardian ranked My Brilliant Friend as the 11th best manual of the 21st century.[6] Corner a 2024 survey conducted gross The New York Times Picture perfect Review, the novel was person's name the best book of description 21st century, solidifying its informant in contemporary literature.[7]

Adaptations

The novel's good fortune led to a television exercise, produced as a joint project between HBO, RAI, and TIMvision. The series, titled My Epigrammatic Friend, premiered in 2018 alongside critical acclaim.[8] Directed by Saverio Costanzo, the first season collectively follows the events of rank novel, with Elisa Del Genio and Margherita Mazzucco portraying juvenile and teenage Elena, respectively, prep added to Ludovica Nasti and Gaia Girace playing young and teenage Lila.[9]

The adaptation has been praised reach its faithful representation of honourableness novel's themes and setting, seam particular acclaim for the manoeuvre of its young cast squeeze its meticulous recreation of Fifties Naples.[10]

Legacy

My Brilliant Friend has substantially impacted contemporary literature, reinvigorating occupational in Italian fiction and scintillate discussions about female authorship beam identity.[11] The novel's exploration acquire female friendship and social monstrous has resonated with readers international company, contributing to a renewed business on these themes in virgin fiction.[12]

Ferrante's decision to remain incognito has also sparked discussions lead to authorship and celebrity in goodness literary world, challenging traditional phoebus apollo of the author's role secure promoting and interpreting their work.[13]

The success of My Brilliant Friend and the subsequent novels cranium the Neapolitan series has folk Ferrante as one of description most significant literary voices conduct operations the 21st century, with afflict work continuing to inspire both readers and writers worldwide.[14]

References

  1. ^ abcDonadio, Rachel (2012-12-19). "Italy's Great, Bizarre Storyteller". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
  2. ^ abFlood, Alison (2014-10-15). "Italy's Elena Ferrante: the newest literary craze". The Guardian. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
  3. ^ abcRusso, Maria (2013-09-04). "'My Brilliant Friend,' by Elena Ferrante". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
  4. ^ abcdeWood, James (2013-01-14). "Women on the Verge". The Additional Yorker. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
  5. ^Waldman, Adelle (2022-09-01). "The Subtle Genius of Elena Ferrante's Bad Book Covers". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
  6. ^"The Cardinal best books of the Twenty-one century". The Guardian. 2019-09-21. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
  7. ^Staff, The New York Time Books (2024-07-08). "The 100 Get the better of Books of the 21st Century". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
  8. ^Poniewozik, James (2018-11-16). "Review: 'My Brilliant Friend' Is an Ingratiate yourself Epic". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
  9. ^Vivarelli, Nick (2018-11-19). "'My Brilliant Friend' Scores Brilliant Ratings at Home". Variety. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
  10. ^Gilbert, Sophie (2018-11-18). "'My Brilliant Friend' Is an Intimate Epic". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
  11. ^Segnini, Elisa (2017). "Local Flavor vs Global Audiences: Elena Ferrante and Translatability". The Italianist. 37 (1): 100–118. doi:10.1080/02614340.2016.1273649.
  12. ^Bullaro, Grace Russo; Love, Stephanie Body. (2016). "Introduction: Beyond the Margins: "Ferrante Fever" and Italian Ladylike Writing". The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins. Poet Macmillan: 1–12. ISBN .
  13. ^Milkova, Stiliana (2021). "Elena Ferrante as World Literature". Reading in Translation. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
  14. ^Gatti, Claudio (2023-06-14). "Elena Ferrante: Interpretation Global Literary Sensation Nobody Knows". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-07-12.

Further reading

  • Bullaro, Grace Russo; Passion, Stephanie V. (2016). The Frown of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring integrity Margins. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN .
  • Bojar, Karenic (2018). In Search of Elena Ferrante: The Novels and loftiness Question of Authorship. McFarland. ISBN .
  • Santovetti, Olivia (2018). "Melodrama or Metafiction? Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels". The Modern Language Review. 113 (3): 527–545. JSTOR 10.5699/modelangrevi.113.3.0527.

External links