My Brilliant Friend, and whether to commit to all four

Two girls in a poor neighbourhood in 1950s Naples, one of whom is the smartest person either of them will ever meet, and the friendship that runs between them for sixty years.

What is unusual about it

The friendship is written with genuine hostility in it. Elena admires Lila and also wants her to fail; she is generous and competitive in the same sentence, often without noticing.

Almost no novel about female friendship admits that, and admitting it is why this one is taken seriously.

The neighbourhood

The other achievement is the setting — a violent, closed, intensely hierarchical community rendered without either romance or condescension. The novel names dozens of families and expects you to keep track. There is an index at the front and you will use it.

The translation question

Ann Goldstein’s translation has been argued about for a decade. The prose in English is plainer than the Italian, and some readers find it flat. It is not; it is doing something deliberately unliterary, which suits a narrator who is anxious about her own education.

The commitment

This is the first of four, roughly 1,700 pages total. The first volume ends at a genuine stopping point — a wedding, and a revelation — so you can stop.

Almost nobody stops. Worth knowing before you begin.