"My Brilliant Friend" by Elena Ferrante

In reading about The Lying Life of Adults, I heard about Ferrante's acclaimed "Neapolitan quartet," which begins with My Brilliant Friend. After reading MBF, there's no doubt the books share the same author. They both are set near Naples, neither with modern settings (though MBF is set in the 1950s and Lying Life in the 1990s). They both address the confusing stage of female adolescence, as relationships with peers--and potential romantic partners--take primacy over family relationships. More narrowly, both novels focus intently on class manifestations, particularly through language (speaking in dialect vs. formal Italian), education, and careers. Even more than the thematic connections, they share a certain haziness and uncertainty. Their characters are childishly selfish and self-centered. They have some understandings of the world around them--but only enough to be confused about everything else.

The primary difference between Lying Life and MBF is the social class on which Ferrante focuses. Lying Life's protagonist Giovanna is upper class; her father is a respected intellectual, and her education is assured. On the other hand, the protagonist of MBF, Elena, and her best friend, Lila, come from poor, working class families. The fact that Elena goes on to attend middle school--and eventually high school--is rare for her neighborhood. Giovanna could afford to be consumed by self-doubt, the uncertainties of relationships. Elena and Lila have the same adolescent concerns, but theirs are also tied to concerns about status, prospects, and--of course--money.

Elena and Lila's relationship forms the central focus of the novel. Lila is brilliant, arrogant, an undeniable force. Elena is intelligent and determined, but she's motivated primarily by attempts to match Lila. Through a series of events, Elena's the one who continues her education while Lila chooses to marry the local grocer--an increase in her social status--at sixteen.

There's an enormous cast of characters for the tiny neighborhood in which the novel is set, yet the effect is overall claustrophobic. For all their hopes and desires, the inhabitants of the neighborhood are mostly destined to remain where they were born. Attempts to break free--such as Lila and her brother Rino's work to develop new, fashionable shoes--seem doomed to fail. Elena learns that for all her atypical academic success, she doesn't even attend a very good high school. Her parents rely on her former teacher to supply books. Ferrante centers an inevitability about class that fuels the frustration, anger, and rage of many of its characters.

As an American, one of the most interesting elements of the novel was the distinction between dialect and formal Italian, a distinction that doesn't exist in American English (of course, all Americans can differentiate a "hick" dialect from formal standard English, but each would be understandable to the other). In My Brilliant Friend, knowledge and comfort with formal Italian is a way not only of demonstrating linguistic superiority, but intellectual superiority. Elena says her philosophical meditations on the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost simply can't happen in dialect. When Elena starts dating Antonio, a construction worker, she looks down on his lack of knowledge of formal Italian. In that way, the language furthers that sense of class inevitability. At least Gatsby could sound upper class. For most of these characters, their dialect is yet another tether keeping them poor and enclosed.

I'll certainly continue the quartet at some point, though I'll need a momentary break from angst in Naples.