My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

We meet the narrator, timid but determined Elena, and her friend, the daring and beautiful Lila, in the first of Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels.  Their friendship plays out in Naples of the 1950's - working class, sometimes dangerous, deeply neighborhood defined.  As young children, Lila is the brilliant one, the avid reader, the deep thinker, the one who can teach herself  Greek.  But it is Elena who is given the opportunity for a high school education and Lila who is married at 17.  The envy flows both ways and at the end of this book, it is Lila who refers to Elena as "my brilliant friend". It was hard for me to find a character that I completely liked but the rich detail of the time and place and the twists and turns in the relationships of the families as well as the two girls draws the reader into a world that requires knowing what happens next.  On to book two....