So many of Ferrante’s fine-grain details have to be left by the wayside I’m struck by how muted and even monochromatic the color palette of the show is when her lively prose created such a rich world. Ferrante’s narrator, Elena Greco, tells the whole story in the first person, with the additions and asides of decades of history as the first scene shows the viewer, it’s only in her sixties that she goes back to recount the story of this friendship spanning more than half a century.īased on just the first episode, my instinct is that this will be a challenging journey for any viewer who is also a fan of the books. But even that doesn’t seem like nearly enough time to sift through the delicate nuances of Ferrante’s prose, or to build the community around her protagonists into a village full of weird, struggling flesh-and-blood characters.

HBO’s television effort, My Brilliant Friend, will be a 32-part series, with eight hours devoted to each book. New episodes are airing Sunday and Monday nights, through December 10.Īdapting a novel is difficult-but attempting to adapt My Brilliant Friend, the first of a quartet of novels by Elena Ferrante, is like preparing for a journey up Mount Everest. This recap is written by someone who has read (and loved) the original books, but there will be no spoilers for future plot points.

We’ll be recapping each episode of My Brilliant Friend.

My brilliant friend by elena ferrante