Today I am bringing you a book that is very popular and it feels like everyone around me and their mothers loved it. I read this together with my friend Amanda.
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante was first published on October 19th 2011. It was originally written in Italian and has been translated to many languages over the years. I have read an English translation.
About the book:
FROM GOODREADS / 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. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.
Review:
This was a buddy read with my dear friend Amanda.
After we finished our buddy read for a brilliant book Where The Crawdads Sing we decided to read another book from Literary Fiction genre.
As My Brilliant Friend is so many people’s favourite, and it is about friendship, we decided to go with it.
I will be first to admit I went into the story with high, huge expectations.
So many people around me loved it and recommended it, so it was obvious I expected to like it too. In fact, I expected to fall in love with the story and it’s characters, and to be completely engrossed with the series.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happened.
I found the story boring, didn’t get attached to any of the characters and therefore didn’t care about them at all.
The only character that kept some of my attention was Lenu, the main character.
The friendship between Lenu and Lila wasn’t the healthiest and I would call them frenemies instead of friends.
Lila was okay at first, but as they got older it bothered me that every single guy except her own brother was in love with her and wanted to marry her.
I never liked the stories about one perfect girl every guy can’t stop looking at, so I didn’t like this one either.
The writing style was also not my cup of tea. It was passive and colorless, never wowed me with beautiful sentences like it usually happens when I read literary fiction.
Most of the time I was bored and at 80% mark I wanted to dnf it, which the old me would certainly do.
I won’t continue with the series because it obviously isn’t for me. I simply don’t care what will happen with the characters.
I don’t think I’ll even ask my friends who read the whole series to tell me important bits in few sentences. That is how uninterested in the continuation I am.
Book Dust Magic 
Thanks for tagging me in this review. I am glad we read this book, even though it wasn’t as good as we hoped. It was still an enjoyable buddy read.
Amanda
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