Author: Elena Ferrante (much about her is unknow, but she is italian and a woman)
Genre: Realistic fiction
Book published: 2011 and Read: early August of 2025
Reason for reading: Saw a random post on Tumb reccomending it
Before picking this novel up, I was in a huge reading slump. I had read comics, but not really any books for fun since The end of my freshman year of highshool. There was the occasional exception to this (For example, once and future by A.R. Capetta and Cory McCarthy, and Bone Gap by Laura Ruby) but I used to be an extremely avid reader, who used to go through, by pure assumption, at least one book a month. As briefly mentioned above, I found this book because I was addicted to social media, saw it on a post, and thought it looked interesting. I was also- as is a recurring theme in my life- though not to this degree) doing EXTREMELY poor mentally due largely to my obsession with a certain mcyt creator, and needed any sort of escape I could get. Turns out this book (along with a very good Beast Boy comic) was available at the library my sister volunteers at in large print, so I checked it out.
When it comes to the contents of this book itself, the first thing I want to mention is that it contains the N word, which shocked me, and is something I don't think was appropriate given it was published in 2011, and because she is Italian I am assuming the author is white, though that may be a bad assumption to make on my part. There's not much more I can say on that, other than it's weird and I don't like it.
As for the rest of the content in the book, I really enjoyed it. I know absolutely nothing about the history of Italy, so it was interesting to read a book set in 1950's Naples, which, of course, then progresses to the 1960's as the characters got older. I also liked how the transition from childhood to teenagehood happened when the man that Elena and Lina considered to be the fairy tale villian of the neighborhood is murdered. The big reason I like this book, however, comes from how much I fel I related to certain aspects of Elena. I'm writing this review in July of 2026, so I don't remember everything exactly, but I remeber thinking that Elena and Lila were both not so great people. The book is from Elena's perspective, however, so we get much more insight into her than we do Lina. And Elena, as it becomes clear, is a self-centered person. As I came to realize later in my own largely self-centered life, these feelings of hers and mine stem from the fact that we have don't like ourselves. Elena has no self-confidence, and so inn order for her to think that she's smart or pretty or well-off, she is constantly comparing herself to others, and seeing how she measures against them. Or- more accurately- she is always comparing herself to and seeing how she measures against Lina. For example, Elena is often regarded as smart, but feels stupid when Lila gets higher grades than her. Thus, in order to feel smart, the only thing she can do is be better than Lila in some capacity. As is revealed later in the book, in a moment I felt was a huge mic drop, Lina feels the exact same way, and has been doing the exact same thing. However, this huge part of their relationship is not really the center of the book, nor does it really blow up in their faces. They fight, grow apart, grow together, etc. throughout the plot, but for the most part- despite this extremely unhealthy truth- they remain each other's best friend. The jealousy, if I'm remebering correctly, is basically only explictly adressed in Elena's internal dialouges. I felt this was very realistic, and contributed to my enjoyment.
To describe my main takeaway in a single statement: this book makes me feel less lonely and less awful for being such a jelous person so much of the time.