My Brilliant Friend
Two girls grow up in a violent, impoverished Naples neighborhood, and one of them is a genius. Ferrante's first Neapolitan novel launched the most talked-about literary phenomenon of the 2010s. The friendship between Lenu and Lila is rendered with such ferocity that it rewired how millions of readers think about female bonds, competition, and class.
Past the 150 to 200 page mark, several readers report the same competitive dynamic between the two girls repeating without enough forward movement, one summing it up as “it just went on and on.” The large cast of families going by nicknames and formal names interchangeably sends readers flipping constantly to the character index at the front. A reviewer questioning her own translation calls certain passages “confusing and even contradictory,” and another reports the opposite of connection entirely: the book “left me without any feelings, good or bad.” A further complaint follows from the 2024 best-of-the-century ranking itself, with more than one reader saying the acclaim overstated what the pages themselves deliver.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
