Neapolitan #01: My Brilliant Friend

Neapolitan #01: My Brilliant Friend
Ann Goldstein, Elena Ferrante
RRP:
NZ$ 24.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 19.99
Paperback
h198 x 129mm - 331pg
5 Mar 2020 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9781787702226
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
My friendship with Lila began the day we decided to go up the dark stairs that led, step after step, flight after flight, to the door of Don Achille's apartment... I waited to see if Lila would have second thoughts and turn back. I knew what she wanted to do; I had hoped that she would forget about it, but in vain. My Brilliant Friend is a ravishing, wonderfully written novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. The two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, sometimes to their own detriment, as each discovers more about who she is and suffers or delights in the throes of their intense friendship. There is a piercing honesty about Ferrante's prose that makes My Brilliant Friend a compulsively readable portrait of two young women, and also the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country.

#01: My Brilliant Friend
#02: Story of a New Name, The
#03: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
#04: Story of the Lost Child, The

'Gutsy and compulsively readable...One of the more nuanced portraits of feminine friendship in recent memory...Ferrante wisely balances her memoir-like emotional authenticity with a wry sociological understanding of a society on the verge of dramatic change.' Vogue (US) 'Everyone should read anything with [Elena Ferrante's] name on it.' Boston Globe 'Beautifully translated by Ann Goldstein...[Ferrante] writes with a ferocious, intimate urgency.' San Francisco Chronicle 'Her novels are intensely, violently personal, and because of this they seem to dangle bristling key chains of confession before the unsuspecting reader...[A] beautiful and delicate tale of confluence and reversal.' -- James Wood New Yorker 'Cinematic in the density of its detail.' Times Literary Supplement 'Elena Ferrante will blow you away.' Alice Sebold 'Ferrante's fictions are fierce, unsentimental glimpses at the way a woman is constantly under threat, her identity submerged in marriage, eclipsed by motherhood, mythologised by desire. Imagine if Jane Austen got angry and you'll have some idea of how explosive these works are...In My Brilliant Friend, the reclusive Ferrante does something hard but true. It goes back to the before and by looking at it clearly, with humour and warmth and rage, loves it.' Weekend Australian 'A superbly perceptive, nuanced, profound portrait of friendship between two young women in Naples in the 1950s...Rich in the detail of everyday life in a poor but proud neighbourhood, unsentimental, intimate, this is a truly memorable novel.' -- Booktopia Buzz 'Ferrante's prose is deeply passionate and detailed, crafting a story of a relationship in which suffering and joy go hand-in-hand...We may never want to be 16 again, but to go back, just for a few hours, is breathtaking. At times, you will be forced to put the book down, close your eyes, and feel the past rushing in.' Time Out Melbourne 'Ferrante bewitches with her tiny, intricately drawn world...My Brilliant Friend journeys fearlessly into some of that murkier psychological territory, where questions of individual identity are inextricable from circumstance and the ever-changing identities of others.' Melbourne Review 'The first two Neapolitan novels [My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name]...move far from contrivance, logic or respectability to ask uncomfortable questions about how we live, how we love, how we singe an existence in a deeply flawed world that expects pretty acquiescence from its women. In all their beauty, their ugliness, their devotion and deceit, these girls enchant and repulse, like life, like our very selves.' Sydney Morning Herald
Elena Ferrante was born in Naples. She is the author of seven novels: The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, The Lost Daughter, and the quartet of Neapolitan Novels: My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child. She is one of Italy's most acclaimed authors. Ann Goldstein is an editor at the New Yorker and a recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781787702226
Published: 5 Mar 2020
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Europa Editions (UK)
Publisher: Europa Editions (UK) Ltd
Format: Paperback
Height: 198mm
Width: 129mm
Pages: 331

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