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I finally got around to reading My Brilliant Friend, a fervent Magpie reader recommendation for years now, and I can’t wait to unpack it and compare notes with you all here. I kept flirting with picking it up, and then I’d hear people say, “It’s slow to start, but stick with it” — a consistently effective deterrent. When the NYT ranked it the number one book of the 21st century earlier this year, though, I decided I had to fill the resume gap, and I’m so glad I did.
I’d put this book in the “I’m so happy I read it, and the more I think about it, the more I appreciate it” category. I’d place it right next to Rachel Cusk’s Outline in this sense. I think about Outline a lot more than most novels I’ve read because of its crisp, almost imagistic realness and originality, and yet it’s not something I’m drawn to re-read, for precisely those same reasons. These are hard, sharp books. With both, I think of Hemingway’s advice on good writing: “Write one true sentence.” Here are two novels of profoundly true prose: there is no way to imagine someone writing with such precision and peculiarity unless they’ve lived through those sentiments before. I think this in part fuels My Brilliant Friend‘s extraordinary logic and appeal: throughout, we find ourselves asking, where is the line between reality and fiction? And what is the relationship between author and text? Nowhere is this more explicitly conjured than in the scene in which Elena survives a sexual assault while vacationing in Ischia, and then says: “In fact this is the first time I’ve sought words for that unexpected end to my vacation.” This is (at least, to my memory) the first time we understand Elena is writing her experience — not just narrating as a first person narrator. We are throttled out of the story and into another story, the one in which Elena is writing the narrative of her relationship with Lila, and we must settle into a different readerly context. Why is she writing? To whom? Is this an intimate letter, a private journal, a published piece? Because Elena is a gifted student, and we learn in some detail about her journey as a writer across the novel, we contemplate a possibility in which Elena has become a published author and transformed her friend Lila into a fictional subject, and then of course we wonder how that Elena relates to Elena Ferrante, the author of My Brilliant Friend. There is an accordioning of fictional layers. (Another complicating feuille introduces itself when we learn, outside of the novel, that Elena Ferrante is a nom de plume, and no one knows who she is.) But why does Elena Ferrante the author wait until this moment to let us know that Elena the character is writing her experience? We must sit with that revelation, and observe the way it changes the heuristics of our reading.
Ferrante explicitly calls attention to these questions of authorship throughout the novel. Elena the character consciously mimics Lila’s writing style, and is rewarded for it; there are several instances in which writers reveal themselves after the fact, e.g., when Nino’s father reads a published essay aloud before announcing himself as its author. There is also the instance in which Elena submits an essay she’s written, but Lila’s edited and copied it in her own hand. Ferrante is clearly pointing us to ask: What is the relationship between an author and her work? In Ferrante’s hands, the answer is obscure, non-linear, irreducible, which complicates the girls’ core belief (cribbed from their obsessive reading and re-reading of Little Women — again a collapsing of text and reader) that becoming a published author will be an escape from poverty. Interestingly, however, in the novel, published works can also be destructive, implosive, even violent in some cases. One of the neighborhood’s core dramas centers around one man giving a book of romantic poems to another man’s wife. This leads to decades, and generations, of conflict. And so throughout the novel, we consider the ways readership and authorship can both create and destroy — sometimes simultaneously.
Setting aside the book’s self-conscious literariness, I found Ferrante’s presentation of girlhood, and specifically the holophrastics of youth — the way we merge and associate certain people, moments, experiences with one another — nothing short of brilliant. The early pages of the novel called to mind the opening of James Joyce’s A Portrait of an Artist, in which we are observing a young mind as it first encounters the auditory phenomena of life, as if in real-time. There is, though, something holophrastic about novel’s style more generally. Much is presupposed, or intimated, rather than explicitly shown. Ferrante’s unadorned, thrifty style underscores this sensation. The reader must fill a lot of blanks, which makes for an interestingly intimate reading experience — one in which I found myself more drawn than usual to writing myself onto the page. For example, though the specifics of these characters’ lives are as foreign to my own as chalk and cheese, I found myself in Elena, and specifically the way she is academically oriented but intellectually unconfident. When I think back on the novel, though, I wonder how much of this was on the page versus intimated and then elaborated upon by yours truly? And so I think again about authorship, ownership, readership, and the blurred lines between.
We’ve now talked about the novel as a bildungsroman as well as a Borges-like interrogation of text and authorship, but there is a third kind of story in front of us: a fable-like tale of poverty, (male) violence, and sex. We could spend hours dissecting this novel from a Marxist / class-based lens. After all, the plot’s principle mechanics are foisted on the two girls at its center, and almost always at the hands of angry, aggressively physical men. We are left hanging — literally hanging! — at the end of this novel when we learn that Lila’s new husband seems to have made a callous, money-driven decision to sell the shoes Lila and her brother made (the shoes being shorthand for art — and art that notably misshaped and hurt Lila in its creation) behind her back to a man with whom she has a violent history herself. There is a lot going on in this moment, and yet — per her economical style — Ferrante gives us very little to work with. We must instead sift through the dynamic relationships between sex, business, pride, art, social class, and intelligence that this one transaction seems to contain.
All in all, I have to agree with the NYT that this novel is essential reading. I consider it one of the better, and more important, books I’ve read in the past decade. Do I consider it one of my favorite reads, though? No. Though gripping, I did not find it pleasant reading, which begs the broader question: why do we read? And how do we define a “good” book?
Please share your thoughts. Should I continue on with the series? (This is the first in Ferrante’s four Neapolitan novels.) I did order the second one already because it was, for some reason, marked down to $3 on Amazon Kindle!
Post-Scripts.
+For a flavor change: great beach reads for LDW. I think my favorites were Carley Fortune’s This Summer Will Be Different and Swan Song. Easy, evocative, just what you want them to be.
+Currently reading God of the Woods, pitched to me as “a literary mystery.” It’s engrossing. Then I might read the newest Tessa Bailey.
+Are you a book repeater? Loved your comments on this one!
+When was the last time you had a book hangover? (Lots of great book recs in the comments here.)
+The last great book I read this year.
Shopping Break.
+First, I used a random number generator to select a winner for the UBeauty lip plasma, and it’s Lisa Horten! I’ll email her to let her know. I’ll do this again soon with something else I love! (And you can still get 20% off the plasma with code JENSHOOP.)
+A recent discovery that everyone needs to know about: AYR’s Early Morning Tee. It’s oversized, it’s got the casual cool dropped shoulder, it’s exactly what you want to wear as a top layer. Somewhere between a tee and a sweatshirt. SO GOOD. I have it in the brown, but did you notice the black/white is called “Magpie Stripe”?! I think I need that one, too.
+You need this shoe organizer. It’s FAR superior to any other shoe storage option I’ve considered.
+OK, Madewell just released their wildly popular darted leg barrel jeans in a brown color. RUN. These are sure to sell out – these have been a Magpie bestseller by a landslide the past few weeks, and I keep seeing them all over the Internet. The new brown and ecru colors (sadly not available in petite inseams!) are SO good. (You know how I feel about colored denim for the season ahead!). I did order myself a pair of the jeans in the petite inseam in the Dobbins wash, influenced by you all! Word on the street is to size down, which is what I did. Will style when they arrive!
+Similar in style, but upgrade picks: Nili Lotan Shons (better for tall Magpies – these were so popular in the Hamptons last year, one of my friends called them “The Hampton Pant”) and Mother Half-Pipes (several Magpie readers have raved about these). If you like the silhouette but are on the petite side, you might also consider these Velvet x Graham Spencer pants — I own and LOVE them. A little more tailored. These shapes are very relevant this season!
+Love this dress for our minis.
+Found a look for less for my Elleme bag — itself a look for less for this Bottega!
+Target run! A few great recent finds: this sweatshirt material throw blanket for your teen/tween, these chic pillow shams, adorable pouf for a play area, toddler Ugg-style slippers, and a sweet lunchbox for a little lady.
+For my Magpie workerbees: Banana has just come out with a line of ponte knit pants perfect for the office, and at a great price point. Love these and these. The latter call to mind Highsport’s divisive crop flares (someone called these “the substack pant” because so many fashion writers on the platform swore by them — but they are absurdly expensive!), and Donni’s look for less option, but with a touch more professionalism. (I own and love the Donnis; more colors here.)
+A very chic belt at a great price. Upgrade pick: Aureum (20% off with JENS20).
+Just updated my Shopbop hearts with some great fall finds.
+A great loose mineral powder – I’ve been using this a lot during these hot, greasy, shine-prone summer months.
+If you’re still living in summer wardrobe territory with no intention of thinking about fall, what I currently want to wear: shorts like these or these (60% off!) with a button-down.
+CHIC date night top, under $130 (plus, use YOUROCK for 20% off). I love that gold hardware detail — written about this several times, but I’ve noticed this nano-trend on bags, shoes, and now tops of having a bit of heavy gold polished hardware. Love!
+Veronica Beard can take all my money. Just noticed this gray coat. Drool.
+Love the look of these track pants.