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My Brilliant Friend
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
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My Brilliant Friend
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Publisher's summary
A modern masterpiece from one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila, who represent the story of a nation and the nature of friendship.
The story begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets, the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow - and as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge - Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as they are transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationships between her protagonists.
With My Brilliant Friend, the first in a series, Ferrante proves herself to be one of Italy's greatest storytellers. She has given her readers a masterfully plotted pause-resister, abundant and generous in its narrative details and characterizations - a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight her many fans and win new listeners to her work.
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What listeners say about My Brilliant Friend
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- ivbell
- 10-07-18
Story should have been about the friend
This is the story of a girl with a smart, colorful, mercurial friend. I only got halfway through and quit. By then, she (the narrator) was starting high school while the brilliant friend was working on custom shoes. Yawn. I lost interest. Where is this brilliancy? Where are the adults who have adjusted to their own failings? Maybe if the book was actually about the brilliant friend instead of the stable, conventional, somewhat bright narrator? It’s like if I wrote a book about Marie Curie and talked about myself the whole time. Is that what we do? Build our lives around others? Planets rotating around the sun. Too bad the book didn’t explore that more fully; at least by the halfway mark when I gave up from boredom.
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