She is smart, feisty, scrappy, confronting the world and those who do her wrong. Lila, the shoemaker’s daughter, has already taught herself to read and write. Lenù and Lila are the smartest in their class in elementary school. Overall, it’s a decade-long look at their childhood and young adult years, growing up in an impoverished, post-WWII, working-class borough of Naples. My Brilliant Friend covers the early years of our two heroines, Elena “Lenù” Greco (who is doing the reminiscing) and Lila Cerullo (who has gone missing). This ignites a four-novel reverie and reminiscence, an autopsy of a life and a friendship. My Brilliant Friend opens, as does the novel, with an older woman getting a frantic middle-of-the-night call that her oldest friend is missing. It’s a very fine adaptation that very visually brings the novel to life. And I must say, that the adaptation captures the essence of the novel, the poetry, and the brutality.

The books are fantastic, truly exquisite – brutal and poetic. Through poverty and slums and misogyny and mistakes and manipulations and jealousies and on it goes. The whole book series is an examination of friendship, of two girls who become women, who are forever seeking to make their way in life. A second season, based on the second book in the series, is already in the works. My Brilliant Friend is an eight-part miniseries, an Italian-American adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s first book in her heralded Neapolitan novels. TV Series Review: My Brilliant Friend (2018)

My brilliant life novel