Book-group reflections on My Brilliant Friend

Small turnout (6) for book-group discussion of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend - overall not a great deal of enthusiasm for the book, with concurrence by and large with my expressed disappointment: the novel had man incidents but its overall tone was flat and unengaging, without much introspection, reflection, establishment of mood, or, other than the broadest delineations,establishment of character. I offered that it would make a good miniseries, and would be far easier to follow as such; to me, the characters were distinguished from one another primarily by their names (except for the 2 central characters), but if seen on the screen we could discriminate among them visually. One male member of the group was the most enthusiastic about the novel and is now on volume 3 of the 4-book series; M has indicated she's going to read volume 2 but there was not much further sentiment to continue. We did engage in some discussion about the identity of the author - including M's account of news stories about a Milanese husband-wife team who have been posited as the possible ID of Ferrante. As to themes in the novel, M noted the mysterious lack of relationship between Elena and her mother. MR noted that Lena and Lila may really be 2 aspects of the same character (I agree). General discussion about the extreme differences between Italian school systems - in which children were not expected to proceed beyond elementary school - and the U.S. We also took note of the Italian post-war ruined economy - as seen in many neo-Realism films from Italy in the 1040s and 50s, and the dawning prosperity that we begin to see in MBF: the small corner shops growing into successful grocery stories, the shoemaker reluctantly moving toward becoming a shoe factory - capitalism taking hold - will probably be a theme in further volumes. And obviously we talked about the feuds and violence that dominate so much of the daily life in the neighborhood - feuds that cross generational lines and that build alliances and antagonisms among the families.