![]() ![]() Even if you want to take a break from heavy classics and go for some "light reading" materials, they don't have to be trashy like this. Do not waste your time reading this piece of garbage if what you're interested in is proper literature. I’m half-way through the first book and I know that I’m wasting my time for not quitting right now but this obstinate habit of mine that doesn’t let me stop until I reach the last page, will force me to finish reading it. The main female characters' friendship is not convincing at all and the prose is embarrassingly juvenile and unsophisticated. It reads as if it was written by a talented 5th grader. *yawn*) and the story is full of cliches and trivia. The characters are boring (a bunch of youth in the hood, either punching each other to bleed or flirting like mad. ![]() Who are these literary critics (NYT, LA Times, Sunday Times, NewYorker etc) singing praises about this? It makes me awfully worried about the future of literature. I greatly enjoyed the story, finishing it in a rush, and look forward to the next volume in the series. Later on, there are relationships with boys to complicate matters (at one point, I realised I was thoroughly confused as to the identity of the narrator's current boyfriend - which is perhaps the effect that the writer intended). One of the things that helps the girls to do this is their friendship, which evolves through several phases, many marked with ambiguity (including the intriguing question of which is the brilliant one). But I found I was gripped by the tale as soon as I got past the beginning: their foreign world is delineated so precisely, in a style which appears so effortless, that I found myself thinking like a poor five-year-old Italian girl and the sheer effort required to survive in a tough world of family, school, boys and opportunities which are - to say the least - constrained by gender. My initial impressions weren't encouraging: it's a story about two girls growing up in poverty-stricken, violent Naples in the 1950s, and the book opens with a cast of characters which, although essential for navigating the story, look bewildering - for example, the two girls each have two nicknames, and two other characters have been given the same name. I bought this book for my wife a couple of years ago, and picked it up to read on a recent trip to Italy. ![]()
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