Name: Eh, where are my 12 years?
Item: My Brilliant Friend
Rating: 5
Author: ChiaraFortunato

6 мая 2026

Eh, where are my 12 years?

If I had read this book in my early youth, I could have learned a lot from it. But even now I am grateful to Elena Ferrante. So, what did I learn from this book?

A Reader's Confession Let me start with honesty: at first, I thought My Brilliant Friend was boring. I had seen it at the top of The New York Times list of the 100 best books of the 21st century, and I expected something explosive, something that would grab me from page one. Instead, I got a slow, careful description of a poor Neapolitan neighborhood in the 1950s. I wondered what all the fuss was about.

But somewhere in the middle, something shifted. I realized the book was not slow — it was building. Ferrante was not in a hurry because she trusted me to stay. And she was right. By the end, I understood: this is not a book you read for plot. It is a book you read for truth.

The Main Idea: Competition Wrapped in Love The book tells the story of two girls, Elena (Lenù) and Lila, growing up together in a violent, impoverished neighborhood in Naples. They are brilliant. They are rivals. They are each other's oxygen and each other's poison.

What is the main idea? I see it this way: The people closest to us both save and destroy us. And love and competition are often the same feeling.

We are used to thinking of competition as male. Testosterone. Men fighting for money, status, women. But Ferrante shows something different: female competition is just as fierce, just as hungry, just as shaping — it just wears a different mask. Girls compete for grades, for teachers' approval, for the best boy, for who is more rebellious, who escapes first. And they do it all while holding hands.

Lila helps Lenù study. She shapes Lenù's interest in learning. But she also secretly undermines her. She pushes her forward and pulls her back with the same hand. And Lenù loves her for both.

What This Book Taught Me. You see, I grew up in a small, quiet Soviet town during the "stagnation period." We did not have many possibilities, but we did not starve. It was comfortable. Almost no bullying in schools. Looking back, I realize: my childhood was protected in a way Ferrante's characters never experienced.

But then I remembered something. At the age of eight, my friends planned a meanness so that I would be expelled from the gymnastics section — so a competitor would be eliminated. At eight years old!!! Thus, brutality and competition exist at all times.

So here is what I learned:

1. Competition is not male or female. It is human. We like to pretend girls are sweet and cooperative. Ferrante knows they are not. And neither was I. Neither were my friends.

2. Help and harm can come from the same person. Lila is not a villain. She is not a hero. She is both. And most of us have known someone like that.

3. Childhood cruelty is not learned — it is innate. You do not need poverty to produce an eight-year-old who understands how to eliminate a rival. You just need a human child.

4. The most important friendships are the ones that wound us. Ferrante does not write about friendships that are comfortable. She writes about friendships that shape us, break us, and make us who we are.

So I'm definitely going to read the next book by the Neapolitan Quartet.

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My Brilliant Friend

Eh, where are my 12 years?

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