Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsBrilliant indeed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 June 2018
I bought this book for my wife a couple of years ago, and picked it up to read on a recent trip to Italy. My initial impressions weren't encouraging: it's a story about two girls growing up in poverty-stricken, violent Naples in the 1950s, and the book opens with a cast of characters which, although essential for navigating the story, look bewildering - for example, the two girls each have two nicknames, and two other characters have been given the same name. But I found I was gripped by the tale as soon as I got past the beginning: their foreign world is delineated so precisely, in a style which appears so effortless, that I found myself thinking like a poor five-year-old Italian girl and the sheer effort required to survive in a tough world of family, school, boys and opportunities which are - to say the least - constrained by gender.
One of the things that helps the girls to do this is their friendship, which evolves through several phases, many marked with ambiguity (including the intriguing question of which is the brilliant one). Later on, there are relationships with boys to complicate matters (at one point, I realised I was thoroughly confused as to the identity of the narrator's current boyfriend - which is perhaps the effect that the writer intended). I greatly enjoyed the story, finishing it in a rush, and look forward to the next volume in the series.
