Join our Monday discussion group for My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante.  This group has been on hiatus for the summer, so please read the second book in the series too, if you can find the time.  This group will probably meet on Zoom so please email Beth Van Ness if you are not a regular member of the group and you would like to join the meeting.  All adults are welcome to join our book discussions.  You can email her at bvanness@libaryconnection.info.  Copies of the selections are available at our circulation desk in advance of the meeting.

Now an HBO series: the first volume in the New York Times–bestselling “enduring masterpiece” about a lifelong friendship between two women from Naples (The Atlantic).

Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Elena Ferrante’s four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its main characters, the fiery and unforgettable Lila and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflicted friendship. This first novel in the series follows Lila and Elena from their fateful meeting as ten-year-olds through their school years and adolescence.

Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between two women.

“An intoxicatingly furious portrait of enmeshed friends.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Spectacular.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

“Captivating.” —The New Yorker