“My
Brilliant Friend” was published in Italy in 2011 as “La amica geniale” and published in
English translation in 2012. It is the first of an enormously successful four
part series known as the “Neapolitan Novels”, which followed a number of
shorter novels in which Ferrante had honed her skills.
Flanked by
an intimidating pile of Ferrante books, the proposer fessed up to having
borrowed the first two novels from his wife when he ran out of reading material
in Australia. Such was the grip of the Neapolitan novels that they bought the
last two volumes when they reached Wellington.
He noted
that, usually, when introducing books we say something about the author’s
background. But ‘Elena Ferrante’ is a pseudonym. Ferrante holds that "books,
once they are written, have no need of their authors." She argues
that anonymity is a precondition for her work and that keeping her true
name out of the spotlight is key to her writing process. “Once I knew
that the completed book would make its way in the world without me, once I knew
that nothing of the concrete, physical me would ever appear beside the
volume—as if the book were a little dog and I were its master—it made me see
something new about writing. I felt as though I had released the words from
myself.”
Last year
an Italian journalist claimed to have identified Anita Raja, a translator who
lives in Rome, as Ferrante, based mainly on her recent high earnings and
acquisition of real estate. This identification caused a storm of controversy,
with many enthusiastic fans taking the view, shared by the proposer, that
Ferrante was entitled to her anonymity.
We dwelt briefly on this aspect. We had no reason to
question the motives that she (or, less plausibly, he) put forward for
anonymity, but anonymity had some obvious other advantages. First, it meant
that friends and neighbours were unlikely to take offence if they suspected
they were the basis for an unsympathetic character. Secondly, it meant critics
would not the classic mistake of trying to interpret the books by reference to
her biography. And, thirdly, the mystery could only help to enhance the aura
around the books.
Ferrante has said she considers the four books to all
be part of a single novel. We examined the close-together dates of publication
and concluded that she must have done all, or almost all, of the writing of the
four books before the first one was published.
For the proposer this was a fantastic novel, with some
major themes, such as the difficulties of bright working class children getting
a good education, particularly girls in traditional societies. It was important
to remember that the novel was set in the 1940s and 1950s. The theme of one
bright girl getting a good formal education and the other not is worked out in
the later books. The book was not just set in a temporal, but in a geographic
and cultural context. Naples was the important geography, but the cultural was
southern Italy, where routine violence, including within marriage, was endemic,
and where private rules enforced by the Camorra were more powerful than public
justice.
The
difficult politics of Italy were brought out well, with the Fascists defeated
but still influential and the Communists important. Changes in society were well
illustrated as the books move through time to the present.
We then
turned to some comments sent in from our correspondent in China. “A story
about growing up, beautifully told. Many intertwined themes about the human
condition. Tensions of the schooldays (I’d almost forgotten them, how a clever
kid survives school). The distinctions between affection, infatuation, lust,
love, friendship. Ambition that’s confused by immaturity. Contrast between the
academic/spiritual and the materialistic mind-set. Gender issues:
boyishness and girlishness contrasted; how women are shaped by men and by the
social structures around them; how women find it hard to be assertive. Why do
boys have to fight. The social tensions between families – how people can’t
cope with a simple wedding ceremony.
“The book
made me recall my own adolescence – a dreadful time. But I think the adolescent
passions of we Brits may not match those of Italians.
Some
reviews say it’s a story of Italy itself growing up (a young country) and I'm sure
there's something in that…..”.
Another enjoyed it, liking the growing up theme and the
relationships in the village, but feeling the book was overlong. The book above
all was about insights into the female psyche, and this was reflected in the
on-line comments. Not having realised until the end that there was an index of
characters, the broad cast of characters with similar names was confusing.
(This latter comment was echoed by a Kindle reader, who strongly recommended
not reading it on a Kindle, so that it was easier to flick back to the
character index!).
We debated whether this was a “feminist” novel, with the
conclusion that it was not, at least in the sense that there was no feeling of
a feminist agenda. The focus might be the female narrator and her female
friend, but the weaknesses and failings of both females and males, and the
realities of the social structure, were recorded dispassionately.
One example was the scene in which a friend’s father tries
to seduce the young Elena. The writer conveys with considerable insight the
confusion, and ambivalent mixture of repulsion and pleasure, experienced by
Elena, and does so without, at least overtly, being judgemental.
Another reader found the very vivid and powerful detail had
sucked him into the book. “I enjoyed it so much I rationed how much I read
at a time so as to prolong the pleasure”.
It was beautifully written, and for whatever reason he simply found it
compelling.
He had visited Naples a year ago – “a spectacular place” - and had enjoyed the vivid recreation of it in the
book. Of particular interest was the ghetto, or “barrio” in which they lived (the next book, which he had
moved on to with alacrity, extended to other northern cities). Did the
behaviour of the families in the barrio reflect just Neapolitan or wider
Italian behaviour? For example, women getting beaten by their husbands was
widespread in the fifties, probably throughout Europe.
But wasn’t the private justice of the Camorra a more unique
feature? Well, plenty of people still came into Accident and Emergency in
Glasgow with serious assault wounds and refused to tell the police who had done
it. Revenge might be taken privately, often through a gang. And, the more we
discussed it, the more we felt that many of the intriguing things in the book
could have been found in other poor European cities in the fifties, rather than
confined to Naples.
Another reader had also found the book most enjoyable, and
in several ways impressive. The book might be mistaken for a very commercial historical
saga, but several things lifted it. There were flashes of psychological and
sociological insight, and of philosophical reflection, clearly and pithily
expressed. There was a compelling exploration of friendship, and how it can
change over time and be destructive as well as supportive. And there was the
paralleling of the development of the characters against the post-war changes
in the city and country.
The two female friends were sharply delineated, as to a
lesser degree were their lovers, while the wider cast of characters – at least
in this first book - were fuzzier.
The shape of the book was that of a “bildungsroman” or
coming of age novel. However, it differed from the classic bildungsroman
structure in two ways. First, it is about the coming of age (if reaching
sixteen can be accepted as coming of age in a Neapolitan barrio) of two people,
not one.
And secondly, it is normal in a Bildungsroman for the
protagonist to become gradually reconciled to the values of the society that
they have questioned. But this novel ends on a very different note as, in the
climactic wedding scene, Elena comes to see the barrio culture as a trap from
which neither she, nor her brilliant friend Lila, can ever escape. It is almost
a Marxist perception in a novel that has occasionally mentioned Communists, and
dislike of them, but not in any way explored their philosophy.
“At that moment, I knew what the plebs were, much more
clearly than when, years earlier, she [my teacher] had asked me. The plebs were
us. The plebs were that fight for food and wine, that quarrel over who should
be served first and better, that dirty floor on which the waiters clattered
back and forth, those increasingly vulgar toasts…”
In broader discussion we noted that the translation – which
read very well – used American idiom, and the proposer explained that the days
of having one translation in British and one in American idiom had now gone
because of the economics of the industry. We wondered, but were unable to
resolve, how the original had handled the question of Neapolitan dialect, as
the text frequently referred to whether or not the character was choosing to
speak in dialect or in Italian. We did note though that the author used little
by way of dialogue, which perhaps helped the novel to flow quickly.
We wondered about Romeo and Juliet as an influence with its
story of young love in Verona across a boundary of family feud. We were also
amused – or perhaps, remembering our teens, not amused at all - by the
discussion of the best way to jilt someone as seen by a teenager (p. 251).
We were intrigued by the girls’ intention to write a modern
version of ‘Little Women’, itself a coming of age story about three girls. And
we were also intrigued by the opening of the novel showing Elena, who has shown
writing ambition but not been published, choosing as a much older woman to
write the book which we were now reading in published form.
One thought that evolved in discussion – and one of the
things about a Book Group discussion is that it should be a dynamic process –
was how similar the names were of Elena (known as “Lenu”) and Rafaella (known
as “Lila” or “Lina”). And – in another echo within an echo, or reflection in a
reflection – Elena is of course also the nom-de-plume of the novelist.
The book was so convincing it would be easy to think that it
was autobiographical, but the similarity of the names “Lenu” and “Lina” had us
reflecting that it was common for writers to take two sides of their
personalities, or of human nature, and create them as different characters (the
extreme example being Stevenson’s ‘Jekyll and Hyde’). To say the friends here
represent, say, reason versus instinct, might be to oversimplify, for while the
rational Lenu is better educated, the intuitive Lina is cleverer than Lenu.
However, something of this kind may be going on. There is
certainly a basic opposition in their natures – Lenu being dutiful, educated,
and through education capable of analysing situations and manipulating people,
whereas Lina is brilliant, spontaneous, and capable of cruelty and violence.
Lina has blossomed from ugly to beautiful, whereas Linu’s emerging beauty has
been ruined by adolescent acne. And one of the intriguing features of the book
is how the two friends interact, and how when one is in the ascendant the other
is in the descendant…….
………and so we went on………and on……..
As R.L.S. himself wrote in ‘Talk and Talkers’:
“There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in
talk.…..There are always two to a talk, giving and taking, comparing experience
and according conclusions. Talk is fluid, tentative, continually ‘in further
search and progress’, while written words remain fixed…….”
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