My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante is the #1 book of the 21st century per the NYTimes

My book review

The New York Times writers poll placed My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante atop their list-- number 1-- amongst the 100 best books of the 21st century. Here, I give you my review of the book. (Spoilers to follow)

A novel is meant to reveal the eternal truths of the human experience, and these are richly evident in Ferrante's writing. There isn't a grand plot. Just two girls born in Naples in the 1950s with a friendship that borders on rivalry growing up together, with intertwined lives. The novel begins in childhood and runs up until the moment one girl (Lila) gets married, and, in a way, achieves the first major victory in their unspoken competition. The victory, of course, is pyrrhic, as she sees that her husband has given (or sold. We learn more in book 2) shoes that she made with her own hands—shoes he promised to treasure forever—to the man she loathes. Who did she marry after all? It's a question many have asked.

The narrator, Elena, serves as the author’s alter ego. Who is she? A poor girl born in Naples, who was never the smartest child---after all Lila and Nico exceeded her in grade school- but nevertheless she was the one who was encouraged and perseveres and achieves high marks in her education.

Education both lifts her out of the life that was destined for her-- she is too good to date an auto mechanic-- but also changes her mind itself. It makes her more persuasive (she can con with rhetoric, as Lila puts it) but also inevitably distances herself from the kids she grew up with. Education turns her into the person who could write this book, with transcendent, lyrical sentences but more importantly a grinding logic, the careful presentation and ordering of details. But it also means she will forever be different than her childhood friends.

Ferrante does all things that I love in a novelist. She writes of mundane matters—the simple truths of the heart. Her characters aren't involved in assassination plots or terrorism. They don't want to change the world. They wish merely to live and be happy, perhaps rise slightly in social rank and wealth. They face the basic choices in life-- who do I marry?-- and these take on central importance. Of course, Ferrante is right. These alone are the choices that matter.

Ferrante, the writer is reclusive. No one knows who she is. She may even be two people--- some speculate: a woman and man. She isn't on Twitter standing next to stacks of her books in selfies, hawking them like a cheap carnival barker. Good for her. She knows that the novel is the end of the art, and the person who created it is irrelevant.

The same is true for other crafts, which may not even appear to be art. The author on Twitter, grinning like an idiot and happy to be sitting on the couch with Oprah, produces a cheap, derivative product that only sells well because it's melodrama and cliches connect with an audience whose brain has been rotten by social media and ubiquitous, trash engagement. Ferrante wants nothing to do with this.

Two girls grow up in Naples. They have a friendship. They court, they spend time with friends and one gets married. Yet, not for a moment is it dull. The book is propelled forward by a violent energy that infuses the world the characters inhabit.

When the boys see a young man in a white, regal sweater in the fancy part of town, they make a sexual comment about his girlfriend. This triggers a fight that ends in bloodshed. Sticks and a tire iron come out. Ribs are bruised. But the violence that exploded could have been worse, the tire iron was sharpened to a point. Only Lila sees it.

A young girl is taken by the Solano brothers. Only her brother is left to defend her honor. What did they do to her, alone and vulnerable? The author never says, and the reader is left to wonder to what extent does the violence run.

Violence is transmogrified into a copper pot. Lila sees it explode. The pot then is a symbol of our lives. How pressure builds and shatter what appears immutable.

When Elena is 15 she travels to the coast and is in the company of a old man, the father of her love interest. He slips into her room, kisses and molests her. Part of her is repulsed-- by his moustache -- yet part of her is aroused. Ferrante shows how abuse leads to shame and secrecy. The scene is haunting. Later Elena urges her boyfriend-- the mechanic-- to confront the old man, a poet. When he at last fears the potential for violence, the old man capitulates.

Ferrante is of my parents generation. And Naples, like India, was not a rich place in the 1950s. In such a setting, violence is often just buried under the surface. Kids and wives are beaten. Quarrels are settled in the street. Ferrante is showing us that world. As the city undergoes financial progress, as the shops grow, civilization may enter, and violence may regress, though it is never gone.

The competition between Elena and Lila is one solely in their minds. Isn't this often the case in youth? When I was a kid, there was a boy who would always turn to see my work during examinations. At last, I confronted him. What are you doing? Are you copying me? (I wouldn't have cared btw/ most kids copied my test back then, but I was curious)

No, he said. I want to see how far you are. I want to finish as fast as you. He said.

It's not a competition, I said and then later, as to this day, I would complete tests as fast as humanly possible. I passed my heme onc boards--- a 16 hour 2 test-- in something like two 3 hour periods. That speed translates into everything I do. Hence we see how a childish contest comes to shape us.

And so too for Lila and Elena. But their contest is apples and oranges. Elena focuses on school. Lila focuses on life. Her family store. Her future husband. The deft that Elena shows manipulating arguments is matched by the deft of Lila in extricating herself from Marcelo and then finding the man she would marry. The Herculean politics of changing one's suitors. Even without a grand education, Lila could edit Elena's letter, improving the logic. In my life, I have only ever had one friend who could improve the logic of my writing. And we have a similar friendship, falling, at times, close to rivalry.

"We'll see who wins this time". The book opens with an elderly Lila literally disappearing from her life and the author promises that in the next four volumes we will learn why. Framed from the outset, it is a competition.

If I have any criticism with the novel is the food they eat is seldom described-- the author must taken for granted her audience would be Italian. Many of the romantic relationships seem underdeveloped. I don't feel as if she captures the heady passions of youth. She tells me about it, but doesn't show me the swirling daze of a crush. How you feel when you see the most beautiful, delightful woman.

The sentences sizzle. P221 when Nino describes his father, the lusty poet. "He knew perfectly well that she was a fragile woman, but he took her just the same, out of pure vanity.". The whole page is spectacular. There can be no more damning condemnation of a father by a son.

As Elena puts it "...the violence of those few carefully constructed sentences hurt me.”

The night of her wedding, Elena (the character) felt the only way to stop the pain of knowing that her friend was the first to have sex was to have sex at the exact same moment with her imperfect suitor.

And suddenly the book ends, in media res. But book two begins with a bang. Sexual violence. Marrying a man you would come to hate. Ferrante is at the peak of her powers and you want to know, achingly, what happens to these two girls from Naples. If only all writers were this good.

But all that said, it isn't really the best book of the twenty first century and the New York Times, like most literary awards, has lost objectivity. More to come on that in volume 2.