My Brilliant Friend: The Graphic Novel: Based on the novel by Elena Ferrante

by Chiara Lagani (Adapted by), Elena Ferrante (With), Mara Cerri (Illustrator), Ann Goldstein (Translator)

Overview

Elena Ferrante’s New York Times bestselling masterpiece, My Brilliant Friend, book one of her Neapolitan Quartet, is now an extraordinary, visually vibrant graphic novel, with text adapted by Chiara Lagani, and illustrations by Mara Cerri.

HBO’s four-season TV adaptation of My Brilliant Friend has enjoyed success with critics and viewers in the U.S.; the novel has been adapted for the stage and radio plays. Here, for the first time, it is brought to vivid life as a graphic novel by one of Italy’s most beloved illustrators.

For Ferrante fans, for those new to Ferrante, for readers of graphic novels, Chiara Lagani’s and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend: the graphic novel is a thrilling new adaptation of one of the best loved novels of recent decades. Translated by Ferrante’s long-time translator, Ann Goldstein, the graphic novel tells the enduring story of the complex friendship between Lila and Lenù in post-war Naples.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609459468
Publisher:	Europa Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/10/2023
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	151,850
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Born in Ravenna, Italy, Chiara Lagani is an actor, playwright, and translator. Many of her adaptations have been staged by Fanny & Alexander, a repertory company based in Ravenna, among which an adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada and “Story of a Friendship,” based on the Neapolitan quartet by Elena Ferrante.

Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), and The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), now a film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, and Jessie Buckley. She is also the author of Incidental Inventions(Europa, 2019), illustrated by Andrea Ucini; Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey (Europa, 2016); and a children’s picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night (Europa, 2016). The four volumes known as the “Neapolitan novels” (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) were published by Europa Editions in English between 2012 and 2015. My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series directed by Saverio Costanzo, premiered in 2018 and is in its third season. Ferrante’s most recent novel is the instant New York Times bestseller, The Lying Life of Adults (Europa, 2020).

Mara Cerri’s illustrations have appeared in the Washington Post, Columbia UniversityMagazine, Galison, Guideposts, and many Italian publications including il Manifesto and Internazionale. She created the animations for Giacomo Durzi’s documentary, Ferrante Fever, and illustrated Elena Ferrante’s tale, The Beach at Night. She is the author and illustrator of many books. She was born in Pesaro, Italy.

Ann Goldstein has translated into English all of Elena Ferrante’s books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Lying Life of Adults and The Story of the Lost Child, which was also shortlisted for the Booker International Prize. She has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship and is the recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award. She lives in New York.

Editorial Reviews

10/09/2023

Based on Ferrante’s 2011 bestseller, this impressive graphic novel adaptation recalibrates the original story line of fraught friendship in post-WWII Italy with sensitive, buoyant drawings and economic yet powerful narration. Elena “Lenù” Greco and Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo grow up together in poverty and amid violence in 1950s Naples. Both girls show academic aptitude and ambition, especially Lila, who teaches herself to read and write. But only Lenù’s parents allow her to continue in school. She feels torn with pity, shame, and jealousy, believing Lila is “always one step ahead.” Meanwhile, Lila is pursued by nearly every man in town. The adaptation delicately, and sometimes more brazenly, captures the charge between the two, with a brilliant deep blue suddenly appearing or disappearing in emotionally charged sections. For instance, when Lila asks Lenù to swear they will “never leave each other,” the story turns to pages of wordless images depicting explosive fireworks in various blue hues. The colorful and lucid sketches crackle on the page. This adaptation exquisitely captures Ferrante’s story of a passionate and consuming friendship. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

★ “Classics often pale in their retelling, but this homage to Ferrante’s epic shines with its own light.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“This impressive graphic novel adaptation recalibrates the original story line of fraught friendship in post-WWII Italy with sensitive, buoyant drawings and economic yet powerful narration...exquisitely captures Ferrante’s story of a passionate and consuming friendship.”—Publishers Weekly

“Aunique and evocative tribute to a modern classic.”—BookPage

“This adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s first volume in the Neapolitan novels is absolutely gorgeous...a must-read for all Ferrante fans.”—Book Riot

“Both unique and uniquely devastating, this entry in the Ferrante-verse will almost certainly find an enthused audience.”—Annie Bostrom, Booklist

“A muted palette and faded colors evoke a sense of unhappy nostalgia similar to looking at a water-stained photograph...Frequent close-ups of people’s faces show subtle but deep emotions during intense moments. My Brilliant Friend is a graphic novel about the ups and downs of a lifelong, life-changing friendship.”—Foreword Reviews

“Ferrante’s beloved novel has already been adapted to just about every other medium you can think of, so it’s not surprising that it has now gotten the graphic novel treatment.”—Book Riot

“Atmospheric, smoky, enigmatic, lovely in many ways, the artwork that fleshes out the tale is fascinating and compelling, raising the level of suspense, mystery and peril the girls face.”—Eric Boss, Reading the West

From the Publisher

★ 2023-08-25
Ferrante’s now-classic saga of an enduring yet complex female friendship shape-shifts once again, this time into a graphic novel.

In Lagani’s streamlined adaptation of the first of four Neapolitan novels, Ferrante’s original narrator, Lenù, does double duty as the (fictional) illustrator of the early years in her complicated lifelong friendship with Lila. “Her” drawings, maps, and illustrations trace the girls’ relationship from childhood through Lila’s marriage. Cerri, the actual illustrator, captures the girls’ environments and moods in gestural, atmospheric drawings that convey the menacing atmosphere of postwar Naples as well as the girls’ determination to move beyond the boundaries imposed on them by family, culture, and economic circumstance. This re-envisioned account necessarily telescopes some backstory and motivation but remains faithful to the broad outlines of the character development and Byzantine plot points found in the original. Readers unfamiliar with the works underlying this iteration of the story—Ferrante’s original books and the hit HBO miniseries from which Cerri drew visual inspiration—may find some incidents puzzling to parse, such as schoolgirl Lila’s apparent fall from an apartment window. (Ferrante’s legion of devoted fans will connect the dots between her father’s anger and Lila’s ejection from the window.) Aspects of the narrative that benefit from Cerri’s visual storytelling include the first episode of “dissolving boundaries” that will plague Lila throughout her life and Lenù’s competitive concerns about the differences between the girls’ maturing adolescent bodies. (Cerri previously illustrated Ferrante’s earlier “picture book,” the mordant The Beach at Night, but delivers less nightmarish visions here.) Goldstein, responsible for translating Ferrante’s prior works from Italian into English, continues that heroic undertaking with a sensitive translation of Lagani’s text consistent with the original.

Classics often pale in their retelling, but this homage to Ferrante’s epic shines with its own light.

Kirkus Reviews