Wow. I have read this rather long book in less than a week. The story just sucked me in and I just had to keep reading. it's written by an Italian author and I have since found out is a real big seller and no one knows anything about the author. (There are rumours that he is writing under a female pseudonym.)
Anyway, I really enjoyed this book. It's all about the friendship of two girls called Lenu and Lila and charts their relationship from when they are pre school all the way to sixteen. These girls are born into a poor and hard life in post war Naples and things are tough. ( It was interesting for me to read this as a parallel life to my Mum's, as these girls were born in the same year. )
Life is grim. There are ghosts and problems in families,which the girls can only sense because they are too young to understand the issues which haunt the families. These problems are based on political alliances and money made and lost during the Second World War. But these problems hang like spectres over the families.
This is a hard life as seen through the eyes of two very intelligent young girls, but girls who come from very different families. Not that parents play a big role in this book. They are weirdly absent from much of it.
One friend leaves school after the primary years whereas the other continues right through school. But what got me was the honesty with which Elena Ferrente writes. The friendship of these two girls is vividly bought to life and their inner secrets laid bare. These girls both love, admire and are jealous of each other,yet are both completely dependent on each other.
The men in this book are mostly macho brutes who just lust after money and power and that also means getting the girls they desire. Looking and playing the part is all that matters to these deprived young lads. These guys have been abused at school, home and work and violence is all they know, so violence is what they show. Infact lots of the way girls are treated in this book is shocking. women are nothing more than a status symbol and are bargained off for marriage via family meetings. ( can't believe this is a European city less than 70 years ago!!)
This book is ultimately about how these two young girls learn to see how the local men view them ,the corruption and hard lives which lay ahead of them and how both react so differently to these realisations.
Yes, this book is pretty bleak and not exactly a laugh a minute and I'm not going to rush out to get the next one in the series , But I am glad I read it because there was just such a strong honesty of how girls behave with their really close friends. I loved it but also found the number of characters annoying. No other characters,apart from the girls, are really developed that well but there is a long cast of people and I was constantly flipping back to the front pages to find out who was who. But hey I still whizzed through it! This book was like a drug for me!
PS. I hated the cover. Horrid freaky bridesmaid dresses and not really suitable for advertising the content of the book either.
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