Tolog Review: My Brilliant Friend

My Brilliant Friend
by Elena Ferrante
reviewed by Morgan Sarno

When Elena gets a call one day from her friend’s son saying that his mother, Lila, has disappeared, Elena is not surprised. Having known Lila for over sixty years, Elena knew that one day she would do this. Lila always overdid things wanting to be the best. Elena had known that Lila wanted to totally erase every particle of her existence. Anything that had some connection to her had gone missing when she disappeared. Elena thought that Lila was really overdoing things this time. Elena realizes that not even she has any reminder of Lila. All Elena has of her friend are memories. The story of their childhood together unfolds as Elena embarks on a mission to save the only thing she has left of Lila and out do her friend, as if they were children again, once and for all. 

Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend” transports you into a rough, blue-collar town in post-war Italy in the 1950s to witness the shifting friendship between Elena, a pretty, smart, and, well-liked girl, and the scrawny, feisty, troublemaking, but extremely intelligent Lila who is always one step ahead of Elena. The competition between the two began as innocent first graders when Lila and Elena venture to Don Achille’s apartment to retrieve their lost dolls. He was hated by adults for unknown reasons and considered the hoarder of all lost objects by children. Hand in hand, the girls dare to retrieve their dolls from Achille, something unthinkable for any child to do if they valued life. This begins the relationship that carries Elena through her difficult school career when she has no one to look to and loses motivation and keeps Lila sane from her manic, abusive family. 

Elena idolizes Lila. Elena pushes herself to the breaking point just to do better than her friend, who is hard to outdo since she is practically a genius. To Lila, Elena is a sanctuary where she can escape the threats of beatings from her harsh father and wealth-obsessed brother. Despite their love-hate relationship, they realize that in the end each girl needs the other otherwise they are miserable. 

“My Brilliant Friend” has the reader turning pages nonstop as you follow the twists and turns of two companions’ on-off friendship through the most lighthearted and the toughest times and a city being revived from the war. This is the first of three books in a series. Ferrante’s other two books in the series are “The Story of a New Name” and “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay”.