La amiga estupenda, es el primer volumen que escribe Ferrante de la tetralogía de la amiga estupenda. Comienza en la ciudad italiana de Nápoles en los años 50 y tiene de protagonistas a dos amigas, Lila y Lenú, ambas deberán encontrar su sitio en una ciudad que va de la mano de la picardía.
Lo que más me ha gustado de este libro y lo que más destaco de este son los personajes femeninos, ya que deberán ir encontrando su lugar en una sociedad donde el machismo esta muy presente. ( )

Should take its place alongside [b:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|7588|A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|James Joyce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388201200s/7588.jpg|3298883] as an incisive account of an intellectual's growing up in a poor, religiously conservative society, and finally outgrowing it. The style however is not as similar to the self-conscious birthing of modernism of Joyce as to the totally contemporary Knausgård-ian direct and unsparing introspection into the mind; it should be no surprise that Ferrante and Knausgård are celebrated in the same current literary circles, though if Ferrante is a bit less well known than Knausgård, well, that's the price she pays for hiding from her contemporaries while he, however reluctantly, circulates as a charismatic male.

Perhaps the hideous book covers are a publisher's attempt to draw her out in outrage? It's a theory.

While Lenu is the central character, it is her friend Lila who really dominates the story for most of the book, in her presence or in her absence. Lila's intelligence and determination, her unwillingness to conform, to be something less, drive the story and Lenu. Lenu realizes she studies so hard mostly in competition with her friend, to impress Lila, and she is temporarily cut adrift and loses motivation when Lila, unable to continue her schooling (at the age of 12... 12!), appears to become defeated by family and neighborhood, to become more like the neighborhood, and Lenu cannot interest her in Greek and Italian and theology and studies anymore.

In the last pages however Lenu comes to the realization that while Lila appears trapped, she herself is driven to continue with her studies. There is no going back, she is no longer of the neighborhood in an essential sense, and one gets the sense that she will soon flee and leave it behind her as Stephen Dedalus fled Ireland.

It was during that journey to Via Orazio that I began to be made unhappy by my own alienness. I had grown up with those boys, I considered their behavior normal, their violent language was mine. But for six years now I had also been following daily a path that they were completely ignorant of and in the end I had confronted it brilliantly. With them I couldn't use any of what I learned every day, I had to suppress myself, in some way diminish myself. What I was in school I was there obliged to put aside or use treacherously, to intimidate them. I asked myself what I was doing in that car.

Lila had remained there, chained in a glaring way to that world, from which she imagined she had taken the best. And the best was that young man, that marriage, that celebration, the game of shoes for Rino and her father. Nothing that had to do with my path as a student. I felt completely alone.

( )

The first half of this novel was much stronger than the second; the almost meandering, vignette-ish chapters of the beginning were so appealing and diary-like that I totally fell into them. They were a great mix of childhood dramas and changing lives and all sorts of interesting moments. However, once a more typical plot develops I felt like the writing changed and slowed a little too much. I also begin to lowkey despise hearing about all the idiotic men running around doing idiotic things. That being said, I’ve become pretty invested in the two main characters and I definitely plan to read at least the next book in the series. ( )

So many other reviews - go read them. I liked it, but I didn't like it. It was interesting, but it wasn't interesting. It is well written, but it is dull. The characters are plentiful and colourful, but many are incidental and ephemeral. There are memorable scenes, but there are long stretches of nothing much. I learned what it might be like to grow up as a poor young girl in Naples, but I'm none the wiser really. I think Ferrante may have written better books, but the translator may have let her down on this one. I could say more, but I could say less. ( )

Dear Elena Ferrante whoever you really are. I only wish I could write like you. Betrayal. Passion. Violence. That sense of barbarity thinly disguised beneath civilization. All captured the lives and loves of children in a cramped neighbourhood of urban Naples. The aspirations of one youth pulled back into the ghetto by her inclination, and out into the greater world by her education. The ironies. Constantly looking backward and forward into the morass of regret and yearnings.

The book begins with a call from a distressed son: Elena (the narrator’s name and also the author’s) My mother has disappeared. Where is she?

Thus begins the spinning of the tale of her childhood friend, Lila, whom everyone else calls Lina, but who’s real name is Raffaela. Why does the narrator have a different name for the poor, skinny, vibrant child who cuts through the bullshit of appearances, who appears to see things before anyone else, but has disappeared in midlife, long after the actions of the novel. This is where Ferrante hurtles us forward to the next instalment of her Neapolitan tales.

Why is it that we the readers know that Raffaela is the dark genius when she herself congratulates Elena as being My Brilliant Friend, the graduate from high school with perfect grades?

I could go on peeling back the layers of this masterpiece forever. This book about books. This story about stories. ( )