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My Brilliant Friend
The Neapolitan Novels: Book #1
By Elena Ferrante & Ann Goldstein
Narrated by Hillary Huber / 12 hours 37 minutes
A modern masterpiece from one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship.
The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists, the unforgettable Elena and Lila.
Ferrante is the author of three previous works of critically acclaimed fiction: The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, and The Lost Daughter. With this novel, the first in a tetralogy, she proves herself to be one of Italy’s great storytellers. She has given her readers a masterfully plotted page-turner, abundant and generous in its narrative details and characterizations, that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight her many fans and win new readers to her fiction.
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“Ferrante is a subtle subversive; the domestic, in her brilliant books, is a time bomb that ticks too loudly to ignore.”
Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies
“Reading Ferrante reminded me of that child-like excitement when you can’t look up from the page, when your eyes seem to be popping from your head, when you think: I didn’t know books could do this!”
Elizabeth Strout
About the Author
Elena Ferrante was born in Naples. She is the author of The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, and The Lost Daughter. Her Neapolitan novels include My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of The Lost Child, fourth and final volume in the series.
Reviews
“I recommend Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend as the perfect summer read. It is a fascinating novel about the childhood of two very intelligent and creative girls in a poor neighborhood in Naples before the Second World War. I loved watching their young friendship develop; their lives are fraught with extreme physicality and filled with emotional intensity. It’s beautifully written and I can’t wait to read the two sequels that chronicle the girls in their later years.”
Dina Hoffman, Bookshop Santa Cruz
Related Reading
Who Is Elena Ferrante?
New York Times
The Neapolitan Novels Series
My Brilliant Friend
By: Elena Ferrante & Ann Goldstein
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
Length: 12 hours 37 minutes
Abridged: No
Now an HBO series: the first volume in the New York Times bestselling “enduring masterpiece” (The Atlantic) about a lifelong friendship between two women from Naples.
Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Elena Ferrante’s four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its main characters, the fiery... Read More »
The Story of a New Name
By: Elena Ferrante & Ann Goldstein
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
Length: 19 hours 3 minutes
Abridged: No
The follow-up to My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name continues the epic New York Times bestselling literary quartet that has inspired an HBO series, and returns us to the world of Lila and Elena, who grew up together in post-WWII Naples, Italy.
In The Story of a New Name, Lila has recently married and made her entrée into the family... Read More »
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
By: Elena Ferrante & Ann Goldstein
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
Length: 16 hours 42 minutes
Abridged: No
In the third book in the New York Times bestselling Neapolitan quartet that inspired the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, Elena and Lila have grown into womanhood.
Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her husband and the comforts her marriage brought and now works as a common laborer. Elena has left the neighborhood, earned... Read More »
The Story of the Lost Child
By: Elena Ferrante & Ann Goldstein
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
Length: 18 hours 26 minutes
Abridged: No
The Story of the Lost Child concludes the dazzling saga of two women—the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila—who first met amid the shambles of postwar Italy.
In this book, life’s great discoveries have been made; its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, Elena and Lila’s friendship remains the... Read More »
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