Helpful Score: 4
MY BRILLIANT FRIEND was the June 2015 pick in my online book club, The Reading Cove, and I'm still yawning.
It starts out interestingly enough, with Lila disappearing and leaving her freeloading son behind without a trace. The son calls his mother's best friend, Elena, who then proceeds to take the reader into one long, meandering, mundane, fickle, petty, plotless and rambling flashback of their childhood and adolescence in 1950s Naples, Italy.
The book ends when they're 16, which means you basically have to read the next book in the trilogy to get any conclusion for the way this book began. Oh, joy!
No thanks.
I'm sorry to say that I can't recommend this book at all because, while it was grammatically solid, the narrative style itself felt akin to the ramblings of grade school journal entries. D.
It starts out interestingly enough, with Lila disappearing and leaving her freeloading son behind without a trace. The son calls his mother's best friend, Elena, who then proceeds to take the reader into one long, meandering, mundane, fickle, petty, plotless and rambling flashback of their childhood and adolescence in 1950s Naples, Italy.
The book ends when they're 16, which means you basically have to read the next book in the trilogy to get any conclusion for the way this book began. Oh, joy!
No thanks.
I'm sorry to say that I can't recommend this book at all because, while it was grammatically solid, the narrative style itself felt akin to the ramblings of grade school journal entries. D.
Helpful Score: 1
My Brilliant Friend written by Elena Ferrante and translated by Ann Goldstein is the first in a quartet, documenting a friendship between Elena and Lila. Told from Elena's perspective, this book is a child's view of childhood and her community with an undercurrent of sadness running through it. Having read this book alone, the story is incomplete. I enjoy it, but it does not elicit an emotional connection to keep me reading through the remainder of the series.
Read my complete review at: http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2015/12/my-brilliant-friend.html
Read my complete review at: http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2015/12/my-brilliant-friend.html
