Set mostly in postwar Southern Italy, Elena Ferrante's four-part novel about the discordant yet loving trajectories of two female friends from childhood to adulthood has gained widespread acclaim. The HBO series My Brilliant Friend is based on her work. Ferrante is that rarest of authors—one who is equally adept at depicting both sides of the romance and not-so-romantic transactions between men and women.  This SDG covers the first half of the Neapolitan Quartet, My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name. The New Yorker review loudly proclaims: “…the sensation...a hungry, relentless urge to keep going, the same feeling that drives you to borrow all someone’s clothes, or pinch them as hard as you can when they don’t understand you. Ferrante shows us the friction that generates human heat—she reminds us what the experience of liking is like.”

Ferrante's gift, one critic argues, is her "unflinching willingness to lead us toward 'the mutable fury of things'" —in particular, toward the passion and bitterness between women and men, and women and women. Ferrante's novels explore the recesses and limits of intimacy: "How many words," one of her heroine's asks, "remain unsayable even between a couple in love?"

1. My Brilliant Friend (2011), pp. 19 - 79

 

2. My Brilliant Friend, pp. 79 - 125

 

3. My Brilliant Friend, pp. 125 - 182

 

4. My Brilliant Friend, pp. 183 - 223

 

5. My Brilliant Friend, pp. 233 - 287

 

6. My Brilliant Friend, pp. 287 - 331

 

7. The Story of a New Name (2012), pp. 15 - 73

 

8. The Story of a New Name, pp. 73 - 131

 

9. The Story of a New Name, pp. 132- 188

 

10. The Story of a New Name, pp. 189- 247

 

11. The Story of a New Name, pp. 247- 303

 

12. The Story of a New Name, pp. 303 – 362

 

13. The Story of a New Name, pp. 362 - 419

 

14. The Story of a New Name, pp. 419 - 471

I will make the HBO series My Brilliant Friend available to all members via encrypted website. We may want to draw on this for reference.

Watch the official Trailer:

 

For rabid devotees such as myself, I recommend The Days of Abandonment (2005). At 188 pages, this is a short novel in which Ferrante lays out her major themes in her mature style. Her husband, also a widely successful Italian writer, penned the book Ties (2017), which is the flip side of The Days of Abandonment, see this New York Times article 

 

Bibliography: 

Core Books

 

2. Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name (2012) Europa Editions, Edizioni E/O, 471pp

Recommended Readings

In addition to the novels listed above, here are a few readings (one by Ferrante herself) that are worth looking at:

Ferrante, Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journal (2017), 400 pp.

 

Sarah Chihaya et al., The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism. Columbia University Press, 2020.

 

Rachel Vorona Cote,"In 'My Brilliant Friend,' Companionship and Survival Are Forever Linked," Bitchmedia (February 1, 2019).

 

James Wood, "Women on the Verge," New Yorker (January 14, 2013).