Around the World #1 - ITALY
Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend
30th July 2025
I had the idea to read Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels before I even embarked on this weird quest of mine. I had seen her novels before - in libraries and bookshops and the like - and had pretty much written them off. Quite literally, I was judging a book by its cover. The edition most commonly in print of the first in this series, My Brilliant Friend, has the above cover. For those unable (or unwilling) to view the image, it is thus - a woman in a long silky wedding gown, arm-in-arm with a man in a black suit, walking away from the camera. Behind them are three little girls in godawful crinoline dresses that make them look like over-frosted cupcakes. Beyond stretches the sea, perfect blue. Above is a gorgeous azure sky. The photograph is lovely, but it does not scream 'good literature'. It makes the book look like chick-lit, or some trashy beach read. It was the sort of thing I pictured yummy mummies reading on their yearly holiday to Crete, only peeking out from above the pages to eye up the attractive Greek barman.
So anyway I pretty much ignored the book, and by extension Ferrante, for a long time. I just assumed that it wouldn't be my thing, and mentally relegated it to the Kinsellas and Steeles of the world. Not something I have the slightest bit of interest in, but all power to those who do like that sort of thing. Just please keep it away from me.
You can imagine my surprise, then, when I kept seeing people online, and people in real life, talk about this book. The cover belied its true nature, they said - just read it! Eventually, after working my way through some other books on my list, I ended up in something of a slump and decided, on a whim, to pick it up from the library. I winced as I did. God forbid people saw me reading this shit, I thought. I intended on having a little look and, if it hadn't grabbed me within the first fifty pages, I'd abandon it entirely and act like I had never even heard of it.
HOWEVER.
The book's inclusion here should indicate that actually I did read the whole thing, and not just that - I enjoyed it!
Two friends - Elena, called Lenu, and Raffaella, called Lila - live in Naples in the 50s, shortly after the end of the Second World War. The story details their friendship from the age of six up to their adolescence, each girl's life very much entwined with the other. Lenu defies the odds to continue her education, something unusual for girls of the time. Lila - who spends a lot of the book checking out multiple library books using a card for every member of her family - is not able to. Both girls are smart but Lila seems to possess something more than just intelligence, more than just drive - her fiery nature makes her a force to be reckoned with, seen early on when she visits a local man known to be terrifying to accuse him of stealing her doll. In a modern-day story, set in today's world, with two girls from wealthier backgrounds, I'm sure My Brilliant Friend would be some immaculate, #feminist tale of two teenage girlbosses who stick it to the patriarchy. Unfortunately, this is post-war Naples, and Lenu and Lila come from deprived backgrounds. The only path they are actively encouraged towards - really, the only one available to them - is marriage, children, and a life of domestic servitude. And although Lenu is lucky enough to have teachers who see her potential and help to encourage her family to push her education further, Lila is not so lucky. Despite her intelligence and brilliant talent in making shoes, she is married at the end of the novel, sixteen years old and devastated at a betrayal by her new husband, occuring in (literally) the final sentences.
Despite the fact that the book takes place seventy years ago, in a time, place, and society with which I am not familiar, Ferrante has a brilliant talent of transporting the reader. I could feel the Italian sunshine on my skin, hear the roar of the engines driven by the boy racers in Lila and Lenu's orbit, taste the salt from the sea in which Lenu swims. Both girls have lives that are brilliant and mundane, all at once, and their relationship with each other is not perfect. Whole chapters are marred by bitterness, jealousy, and frustration. There is an entire section of time where Lenu, encouraged by her teacher, spends a summer at a small bed and breakfast to sharpen her English and explore the world, which was then quite limited to her. Lila stays home, wistfully creating shoe designs that will never be taken seriously by her father, the cobbler. I found the depiction of their relationship to be one of the more realistic portrayals of the often intense and sometimes fraught friendships between women, especially those first forged in childhood.
Do I have the required cultural context to properly appreciate this novel? Probably not. Italy was - and to an extent, certainly remains - a Catholic country with strictly-defined roles for women. Though I think any woman could probably appreciate the struggles of our foremothers in forging their own lives, free from the constraints of society, it is something that affects us less and less these days. (And although I have been to Italy, it was not to Naples and I only went for three days).
So yes, it's fair to say that I liked this one. It's also fair to say that I was wrong about the cover. I'm sorry to have doubted you, Elena. My Brilliant Friend is elegantly written and tells a rather refined story, one that feels timeless in its execution whilst still clearly pinpointed in its post-war poverty.
First published: 2011
Published in English: 2012
Around the World in a Hundred-Ninety-Five Books
23rd June 2025
I read about forty books a year. The vast majority of these are fiction novels, though I occasionally sprinkle in anthologies, non-fiction books, and a couple of children's books (for nothing other than sheer nostalgia) to keep it spicy.
A few months ago, somebody at my book club told me that he was reading the Bible. I'd blinked at him.
"I didn't take you for a particularly religious man."
"I'm not," he replied cheerily. "I just thought it'd be an interesting thing to do. To look at this text - considered sacred by so many cultures - as a historical record, and also a literary one."
To my knowledge, I believe he is still working on it. But it got me thinking - why do I read? Well, the answer is, because it's fun (though thinking of this question, however rhetorically, always puts me in mind of the Bill Hicks bit.) I read because I have always read, because I remember learning to read about as well as I remember learning to breathe; a strange quirk of my own personality more than anything, because my parents do not read and, until I was about seven and started clamouring for them, I don't believe we had many books in our house at all.
But this of course is secondary to the real point. Reading is fundamental. Reading strengthens your vocabulary. It gives you a greater understanding of the world around you, deepens your ability to feel empathy for the others who inhabit it. Reading is better for you than doomscrolling, and a good book beats television every time.
However - and here's a crucial point - does reading actually help if all you read is trash? I don't read trash, or at least I don't think I do - I loved SF as a teenager and thus I do occasionally read it, since old habits are hard to break. I've read a few "BookTok books" in my time, although the romantasy ones have never appealed to me. There are particular publishers I gravitate towards more often than not, many of them small presses, and I am working my way through some of the old masters (though I think Anna Karenina, which I started a few weeks ago, will take me some time to finish). I consider myself well-read, but am I really? I read things that are recommended to me, whether online or in real life. I come into contact with books quite often at work, and they sometimes catch my eye. Lots of these are works in translation, by authors that I have never heard of, whose native languages I could not begin to comprehend.
I think you know where this is going.
I take great pride in reading my forty-ish books a year, but could I extend my goal somehow? With rising climate change, political and social instability in many regions, and a fear of flying and sailing (though the former is worse and more paralysing to me), it is very unlikely that I'll be able to travel the world and see the wonderful sights that other humans have created. We all live on the same planet, don't we? And literature is one of the few things that seems to transcend culture. So, here is my plan -
I am going to read a book from every country in the world.
I realise that deciding which landmasses and arbitary borders actually encapsulate 'countries' is a bit of a controversial question, so I'm going to go by the list given by Worldometer, which specifies the 193 UN member states, as well as the two observer states, those being Palestine and the Holy See. This brings us to a total of 195 countries; ergo, 195 books. I read perhaps forty a year, but this has sometimes been as low as twenty-five in the past, or could even go over forty (although I doubt it). I will also want to read the other things on my to-be-read list, outside the scope of my around-the-world trip. Therefore, I have no idea how long it will take - or even if I will be able to complete this task - but I still want to try.
The best things in life have rules, and if I want any chance of finishing this thing, I need to set some. So - deep breath -
Rule #1 - Language
Right, this is where I show myself to be a filthy monolingual, and where I make it even harder for myself than it already needs to be.
I speak and read only English. I am actually learning Japanese, and I studied Spanish during my school years, but my command of both of those languages is childish and simply embarrassing (best evidenced when I ran into a woman who could speak Japanese in a pub once, and to whom - upon being pressed - I could only stammer out the phrase, 'Well, Japanese is pretty hard...'). For this reason, I intend on only reading books that have been translated into English. Yes, I realise that by virtue of translation, some of the original charm, meaning, and significance is lost. I realise that by reading a translation, it's possible that I may completely misinterpret the author's original meaning. However, there are also only so many hours in a day, and I am not prepared to learn Uzbek for the sake of reading one book.
Rule #2 - One Book Each, Please!
Because I read a lot, and only in English, I inevitably end up reading lots of books by Anglophone authors. However, I am only going to select one book for each country. This is because 195 books is actually quite a few and it's already going to take me just over four and a half years at best (and this if I read 40 books a year and they are all part of my Literature World Tour). One each. That's the best I can do.
Rule #3 - Nothing Too Old
When I was originally deciding on how best to approach this, I ran into the natural hurdle of time. Literature, as an art form, is pretty old. Styles and methods and the types of stories, plots, and tropes differ generation by generation. Would it be a fair contrast, for example, to hold up a modern Australian novel to something like, say, The Brothers Karamazov or The Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Don Quixote? Probably not, which is why I have decided that all books must be 20th century or newer. Originally I had thought to do only postwar works, but this gives me only eighty or so years worth of books to pull from, and many countries will not have established-enough literary scenes for this to be fair. 1900 is the oldest I'll go. This leads me onto my fourth and final rule, which is -
Rule #4 - The List of Countries, As It Currently Stands
(Lauren winces, and grits her teeth).
Okay. This is delicate. There are 195 countries on the list. This probably, without naming any names, includes countries that perhaps some people do not recognise the legitimacy of. There are also countries not on the list that you might think ought to be included. I am not Little Miss UN or the Queen of the World (though I sometimes think I am, or should be). I do not control which countries are considered legit and which aren't. I am just some moron online who likes books. I will be reading one book from each of these countries and commenting on it. That's all. Phew.
Further to this point, the books on the list will come from countries as they are currently understood, in 2025. For example, at the turn of the 20th century, the Korean Peninsula contained one country - Korea - which was later split into two, the Republic of Korea (South) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North). Right now, there are two Koreas. Therefore, there are two books. Similarly, I am prevented from reading something like, say, The Master and Margarita because it was published in the Soviet Union, by a Soviet author. The Soviet Union no longer exists in 2025; therefore, rather than reading a Soviet book, I will read one from each constituent nation of the place once called the USSR. Yes, I am aware that this makes it harder (fifteen whole books harder, to be precise). I do not care. It is my list and my rules and MY THING.
Finally, I have one final flexirule, one that I am tentatively setting (but may will end up being broken):
Flexirule #1 - No Diaspora Authors
So I had set this rule for myself originally, not because I think diaspora authors 'don't count' or because I think they have nothing worth saying. I just felt that it was important to read a novel fully steeped in the culture and community in which it was originally set. However, this is going to be challenging for some countries, mostly because of the other rules I've laid out above. So, I am going to aim for books by authors who are born and raised in the country their book is from. However, if I feel that a novel by a diaspora author is suitable, then I will count it. I guess.
And that's it! Those are my arbitrary rules for my silly campaign that I've embarked on. I'm not going to rate the books, necessarily, as I'm not much of a critic. I'm also aware that I may not have the required social and cultural awareness to really comment in-depth on the chosen books. I just think this would be a fun and interesting thing to do. So, wish me luck! Because familiarity is the last refuge of the unimaginative, I have decided to start with Europe (which is where I live). Keep an eye out for the first stop on my Worldwide Book Train - ITALY (I don't live here, but I went to Rome last year and it was really nice, especially the history and the sunshine and the gelato). To be more specific, we're going to Naples, baby. Book #1 is Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend.
Keep an eye out for my comments, whenever I get round to it. Until next time!