When in Naples …………… My Brilliant Friend ... the book and now the TV series

Naples is a city which both fascinates me and leaves me uneasy.

It is noisy, busy and fun to be in.

But it is also a place where you know things do not always go to plan, and where even now poverty has a tendency to busy itself.

Step off the main streets into those back alleys where the buildings rise from the ground into the sky and the light fights hard to penetrate, and it is easy to get lost.

Often the narrow streets lead off into even narrower streets and the blocks of apartments seem to challenge gravity.

The first time we visited, Simone and Rosa who were born there warned us to be careful, a warning it turned out to be without substance.

And yet like any city, you know where not to go, and which groups are best to avoid.

That said I love the city, and today I am rereading My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, about two young girls growing up in a working class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples.

Those who have never lived in such areas, or experienced the uncertainties of life where an accident or an illness to the main earner, can pitch a family into poverty or destitution, do sometimes romanticise life in such places.

But not so My Brilliant Friend which chronicles the violence, the hardships and the pettiness which was the backdrop to everyday life.  “I feel no nostalgia for our childhood” writes Elena, “it was full of violence.  Every sort of thing happened at home and outside, everyday".

And "It was a world full of words that killed,: croup, tetanus, typhus, gas, war lathe, rubble, work, bombardment, tuberculosis, infection”

And while this was the 1950s, the memories of those who had died during the war along with those who succumbed to disease or accidents were everywhere.

Now, as a historian I find it a powerful account of that period in post war Italy when the prosperity of the North is still only a dream, and when many are driven to head for the great industrial cities of Milan and Turin to escape the grinding poverty.

But it is also a wonderful description of how people interacted, and in particular the two young girls Lila and Elena.

The translation is easy to read and just like the first time I am struggling to put it down.

Added to which I have just ordered up the TV series by the same name, the first of which was produced in 2018, and the follow up a year later.  As it happened we watched the series sometime ago, and it will be fun to look at it all over again.

Location; Naples,

Pictures; Naples, 2018-20, from the collection of Saul Simpson and Balzano

* My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, 2012, translated by Ann Goldstein