#neapolitan tetralogy

[ophelianwater]

lenú and donna and how they defined part of their self in relation to lila and laura. lenú tries to free herself from that whilst donna, even more after laura's death, dissolved herself into laura - the relationship with james being the prime example.

[literatureaesthetic]

— the neapolitan novels ; elena ferrante

i just realised i never posted that i completed this tetralogy?? 'the neapolitan novels' is now one of my all-time favourite series. the themes, the characters, and the writing are absolute perfection in my eyes. i've never encountered an author with the ability to construct relationships like ferrante.

it's impossible to review this series without writing a whole dissertation because of its sheer magnitude (magnitude in terms of complexity and intricacy of themes rather than literal page length), but i will say that elena ferrante has become one of my new all-time favourite authors <3

➝ neapolitan novels playlist

[maxdibert]

It’s not related to fandom, but what do you like most about female friendships? Personally, I love stories where girls are silly with each other and get into trouble together. Something like soulmates, I believe. I’m fascinated by friendships so close that it feels like they were born to be together, you know?

I had that feeling when reading The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante. They are narrated in the first person by the protagonist, Lenù, but at the same time, her friend Lila is just as central to the story, and also to Lenù's life. The lives of both Lila and Lenù cannot be understood without the influence of the other; they are friends but also rivals, and in the end, they are family. It's a highly co-dependent, complex, and toxic relationship that traps you, suffocates you, and knocks you down. You get to know them from childhood, and you grow with them, diving into a world full of violence, struggle, ups and downs, and emotions so intense they overwhelm you. It's a fucking masterpiece of a tetralogy, honestly.

I think what I love most about stories centered on female friendship is that female friendships are much deeper than male friendships because they carry with them the trauma of femininity itself, having to grow up too soon due to cultural impositions, confronting the systemic violence of a patriarchal society that oppresses and relegates us to ostracism, not being able to express ourselves as we are unless it's among ourselves, and the fact that we are precisely raised under the notion of emotion, which makes us more self-aware of our feelings and more expressive about them. I love stories about girls being girls, having girl problems, and where their friends are a crucial part of their growth. As they said in Sex and the City: maybe men are simply people you encounter along the way, but your friends are really your soulmates. I firmly believe in that. I believe it’s your friends who are there when someone in your family dies, when an uncle who’s been your whole world leaves. Your friends hate the people who hurt you more than you do. Your friends may feel like shit, but they will always tell you what they wish they could hear when you’re feeling like shit. Your friends will see that ex who fucked up your life at a club and throw a drink in his fucking face. Your friends will tolerate you crying in the bathroom, hold your head while you puke after a drunken night, and get you in the shower to spray cold water on you so you wake up. Your friends will listen to you, they’ll judge you, and tell you that you're being an idiot, but they’ll support you because that’s their job, and when you fuck up (because you will), they won’t throw it in your face but will give you support. And that’s what friends are like. Bearers of the terrifying truth and an outstretched hand. And I think we need more representation of that in fiction. More stories of girls being girls, growing, facing shit, and only having each other because only among themselves do they understand. Complicated, problematic girls who are fucked up, who mess up, who get into trouble, who cause a lot of chaos, and who have the possibility, but above all the right, not to be just girls, but also human.

[bigshoeswamp]

Hi! For the ask game: 1, 3, 14, and 19

Song of the year?

First Time by Hozier

The two first stanzas make me crazy every time, no matter how many times i've listened. Honorable mention to Butchered tongue and Azul by Melly

2. Favorite musical artist / group you started listening to this year?

Fionna Apple for sure! I've finally entered my Fionna Apple era, and now no one can stop me alksdja

I knew be into her one day, and now the time had finally come. I've been listening to her stuff non-stop these 2 last weeks. Currently with "Relay" on my head.

14. Favorite book you read this year?

Oof! This one is hard. I'll have to chear and say the Neapolitan Tetralogy and Stone Butch Blues - all of which grabbed by the neck and changed me forever.

19. What’re you excited about for next year?

i'm more afraid of messing up than excited for the next year tbh. I'll be doing everything i've been wanting for years - working with restorative justice and starting my masters. I'm looking forward to it, but for now i'm mostly afraid of not being able to take the things i want, you know.

[elenaferrante]

If you want to read Elena Ferrante, I would suggest starting with The Days of Abandonment (how great is this title btw? I am obsessed), then if you like her/her style/her stories, I would suggest continuing with the Neapolitan novels (its a tetralogy, the first one is My Brilliant Friend).

And if you do read Ferrantes books, anon, please come talk to me about them!!!! 🤍

Ooh bestie I’d be very interested in specific book title recs for Complex Female Characters struggling with inferiority/superiority! That sounds great and I’ve been meaning to branch out with my reading this year

if you are okay with really dark sexual topics - mentions of sexual assault, misogyny, etc. - then i would recommend lisa taddeo's books (her novel animal, her nonfiction book three women, and her short story collection called ghost lover.) or elena ferrante! (shoutout to my book bestie @elenaferrante who could give great ferrante suggestions.)

if that's not your speed, but you like snarky and intellectual characters, i'd recommend curtis sittenfeld. i'd start with her short story collection, you think it i'll say it, and if you like it, then move on to man of my dreams, rodham, prep, and eligible.

if you like quirky, weird, socially isolated type women who buck at gendered expectations, i'd recommend miranda july (especially her short story collection, no one belongs here more than you, or her novel, the first bad man) or convenience store woman by sayaka murata.

if you like stories about women with strange relationships to motherhood, try samantha hunt's collection of short stories called the dark dark (short stories.)

all these authors are white ciswomen and i apologize if that's a demographic you are tired of reading about (i am too kinda! lmao)

[iphisesque]

Autobiography for the book ask, please?

Autobiography: Who is the protagonist you most relate to?

I don't know about one singular protagonist, mostly because thanks to my ridiculous memory I cannot remember all the books I've read, but I most relate to couples of protagonists that complement and contrast each other and are essentially like different parts of a single person, I find that some of them really encompass the contradictions of who I am at my core: the most egregious example of this would be Narcissus and Goldmund from the homonymous novel, two characters that really spoke to my inner conflict of eros vs logos, but I think this also very much applies to Elena and Lila from the Neapolitan tetralogy.

[redorblue]

The Story of a New Name, by Elena Ferrante

I just finished reading The Story of a New Name, the second part of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, and I’m completely blown away by how good this book is. The first one, too, and I can’t wait to read the third and fourth part, but this one genuinely makes me want to bow down to Elena Ferrante and promise her my firstborn child. I’m not saying that it doesn’t have its lengths, but the amount of detail that she puts into the settings and the richness of the characters’ inner lives makes me want to read twenty more of its kind - it’s just that good. It even makes me want to freshen up my Italian because the difference between speaking standard Italian and the Neapolitan dialect is an important part of the book and would probably add a lot more depth, but... I can’t wait that long.

The first two installments of the tetralogy are mostly set in Naples in the 1950s and 1960s, in a poor neighborhood at the outskirts of the city. This is where Elena and Lila grow up: two girls with very similar backgrounds (working class fathers, stay-at-home mothers, miserable living conditions, a lot of domestic and street violence), but with very different personalities. Lila is a very extroverted person, direct to the point of rude or aggressive, courageous, impulsive, sometimes manipulative, very passionate, and gifted with a very creative and astute kind of intelligence. Elena is more of an introvert, a very diligent, responsible and disciplined person who tries to avoid conflict at all cost and has a good eye for unwritten social rules, with a rich emotional life but an aversion to sharing it with others. She’s also gifted intellectually, but rather as a result of hard work; she’s what you’d call booksmart as opposed to Lila’s intuitive intelligence that’s mostly focused exclusively on her rather volatile fields of interest.

In short, in many regards they’re each other’s opposite, which makes their friendship incredibly fascinating from the outside and alternately fortifying or toxic from the inside. When things are good, they ignite each others’ brains with ideas and they support each other no matter what; when they aren’t, Lila manipulates Elena into things that hurt her (or both of them really) and intentionally ignores her discomfort, while Elena distances herself, judges Lila and tries to assert her own superiority. The competitive streak that runs through their friendship at times inspires both of them to surpass themselves, but it also leads to them constantly trying to outdo each other - and let the other know. No matter how fraught their relationship gets though, they are always the most important person in the other’s life, both the anchor that stabilizes them as well as the benchmark that they measure themselves against. It’s a defining element of both the main characters’ lives, even as their paths drastically diverge: Elena, because of a combination of luck and hard work, gets the chance to continue her education after primary school and even goes to university, while Lila, who has the talent but lacks the luck, is not allowed to go to school any longer and is ultimately forced by circumstance to get married at 16 - which, considering her personality and the society she lives in, obviously does not go well. All in all, it’s a fascinating portrayal of a lifelong friendship under (at times) incredibly difficult circumstances that shapes both of them at their very core. It doesn’t romanticize or trivialize a bond like that, but shows it in all its ugliness and glory, and what’s more: it makes this friendship the central relationship of the book.

But the story is not only a brilliant examination of female friendship (and it is very distinctly female: both characters can never escape their roles as girls/young women in a heavily patriarchal society), it’s also a very observant analysis of the ways that class and gender intersect to shape and constrain the paths and personalities of Elena, Lila and their friends and neighbors. I’m tempted to add ethnicity to the mix, too; I’m not sure if ethnicity is the right term, but I can’t think of a better one, so I’ll stick with that. I’m not exactly knowledgeable about Italy’s demographic makeup, but if I remember it correctly, there is a quite distinct divide - culturally, economically, socially, linguistically... - between the North and the South, with the North as the economically stronger (and possibly less corrupt) part and therefore in a position to look down upon the South. This is an especially important aspect of Elena’s story in The Story of a New Name, when she goes to Pisa to study and feels forced to hide her Neapolitan background as much as possible. However, in the neighborhood where Elena and Lila grew up and where most of the first and second book takes place, ethnicity plays less of a role. Externally, within the framework of greater Naples, the main dividing line is class, expressed as income, way of speaking, access to education, clothing, and general display of wealth. The neighborhood itself, on first glance, is more homogeneous: even the local bigshots, who own a car, give out shady loans to the entire neighborhood and maintain ties to the mafia, aren’t particularly educated or refined in comparison with the Neapolitan upper classes. What they do have is money, and that’s one of the observations that I love about this book: money, no matter how much of it you amass, can never be the same as being born upper class; it can buy some privileges, but it can’t buy parity with the truly powerful. Within the limited domain of the neighborhood, however, money is one of the main mechanisms of stratification, the other being gender.

Toxic masculinity plays an important role in the story, and it shapes the lives of everyone in the neighborhood in different ways. We don’t meet many of the older men (= parent generation), but that’s a statement in and of itself: many of them are either dead, dying, or in prison. Those that are left are characterized by submissiveness and resignation to those with more power, and they channel their feeling of powerlessness and the resulting emasculation by beating and abusing their wives and children. The older women have lived too long under such circumstances: they do care about their children in some way, but the methods they use to make especially their daughters conform to patriarchal expectations and thereby protect them from male wrath end up doing just as much harm as the fists of the fathers. Female solidarity and close personal friendships such as that of Elena and Lila are rare because of the women’s feeling of disempowerment, trauma from a lifetime of violence and general economic hardship. And so the vicious circle repeats itself, with everyone caught up in it absolutely miserable, but unable to do anything about it, since class limits make it virtually impossible to get out.

This is equally true for the younger generation. The boys are taught from a young age to associate male behaviour with violence, aggression, a very prickly sense of honor, and a superiority over women that allows them to possessively watch over them and use violence against them to keep them in line. This holds true for rich and poor neighborhood boys alike, which proves that it is not an issue of class alone. The author further supports this argument by giving counter-examples like Alfonso, who in theory is just as predisposed to toxic masculinity as all the other boys: a violent father, (temporary) economic deprivation, violence in his peer group... What makes Alfonso different from most of the other boys is his personality on the one hand and his advanced education on the other. I think the author is saying that education is the key to overcome at least the worst outgrowths of violent male behavior. Of course education is contingent upon the class a person is born into, but with Alfonso, and partially Enzo (and Nino, too, much as I hate to admit it), she proves that neither class nor gender automatically make a man violent - and that neither one is an excuse for toxic masculinity. This claim is strengthened further by a counterexample, namely Bruno Soccavo, the son of a rich industrialist who leads a privileged life and still thinks it his right to sexually exploit the female workers at his factory.

But since the focus of the story is on Elena, Lila and their female friends and frenemies, this is where we get the most intimate insights into what toxic masculinity and economic deprivation/dependence together do to f**k up the lives of girls and young women. The girls mostly display a pretty thorough understanding of how things work: they know what they can and can’t tell the boys in order to avoid violence among the boys and towards the girls themselves. I’m pretty sure that even Lila knows how to avoid offend the boys’ sense of honor, but between her recklessness courage, her desire for freedom and her self-destructive streak, she just doesn’t care very much. But even this understanding, the result of a lifetime of studying the behavior of the men around them, does not help them very much because it doesn’t leave them enough room to put their feet down, let alone breathe. Lila is the best example of this: after being denied further education and blossoming into a beautiful teenager that attracts the attention of every male around her, including a rich mafioso, she really has no other option than to marry the (seemingly) most acceptable of her suitors at 16 years of age. But of course, he turns out to be violent and controlling, too, and since he’s more powerful than her brother and father, she really has nowhere to turn to. And as I mentioned already, neither the older women nor the girls have enough emotional or material capacities to meaningfully help each other. Some of them also simply don’t want to (the author doesn’t romanticize anything here, either), but I dare say that even that is a result of economic deprivation plus toxic masculinity: from a very young age they’re drilled to think of marriage as their only way to relative economic security, and their future husband’s affection as the only way to avoid being beaten or even killed. So it’s natural that female solidarity, as desirable as it’d be, is not very wide-spread in the neighborhood. Basically, what the book says about toxic masculinity and patriarchal systems is this: yes, it hurts both men and women, young and old, rich and poor; but in the end, it’s always the women, and especially the poor women, who end up with bruises on their face.

[citylightsbooks]

5 Questions with Jenny Xie, Author of Eye Level

​Jenny Xie is the author of Eye Level (Graywolf, 2018), selected by Juan Felipe Herrera as the winner of the 2017 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, and Nowhere to Arrive (Northwestern University Press, 2017), recipient of the 2016 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Prize. She teaches at New York University.

Jenny is at City Lights on Tuesday, May 22nd with Jennifer S. Cheng, both reading from their new poetry books.

City Lights: If you’ve been to City Lights before, what’s your memory of the visit? If you haven’t been here before, what are you expecting?

Jenny Xie: I’ve never been to City Lights, and I’m very much looking forward to making a pilgrimage to the space. I was quite enamored of the Beat poets when I was younger, and read about Ferlinghetti and City Lights in a book tracing the history of the Beat movement. Descriptions of the bookstore, and the catalytic exchanges that took place within those walls, helped shape some very romanticized notions of “literary bohemian life” for me. City Lights, and all it stood for, felt impossibly distant for a bookish teenager residing in suburban New Jersey, where the closest bookstores were found in shopping malls. I’m expecting the City Lights to wear its layers of history on its walls, and I’m hoping to encounter some lesser-known photographs from those first few years of the bookstore—images etched deeply in my teenage imagination.

CL: What’s the first book you read & what are you reading right now?

JX: I have early memories of reading Chinese picture storybooks and primers, many with heavy moral overtones. Some were quite macabre, too.

Some of the books I’m reading currently: Tracy K. Smith's Wade in the Water, Rachel Cusk's Outline, Analicia Sotelo's Virgin, Matthew Dickman’s Wonderland, Ben Purkert’s For the Love of Endings, Amy Meng’s Bridled, Soham Patel’s to afar from afar, Carly Joy Miller’s Ceremonial, Celina Su’s Landia, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s Cenzontle, Hieu Minh Nguyen’s Not Here, Rigoberto González’s What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth, and Jennifer S. Cheng’s MOON: Letters, Maps, Poems.

CL: Which 3 books would you never part with?

JX: This is too difficult to answer! I will say the three books from the last few years that I had an immediate urge to reread after finishing were Yiyun Li’s Dear Friend from My Life I Write to You in Your Life, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan tetralogy, and Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness.

CL: If your book had a soundtrack, what would it be?

JX: The actual music that I often wrote and worked to while writing Eye Level include Jace Clayton's The Julius Eastman Memory Depot, Max Richter's Sleep, and Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis, so those seem appropriate. I love the heightened drama and dark menace of the Clayton album, and the lulling, ruminative quality of the Richter and Glass.

CL: If you opened a bookstore tomorrow, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

JX: I’d like for it to be someplace remote, where time feels less compressed than in New York City. The space would be filled with tattered couches you could sink into and ample places to perch. Swapping books would be an acceptable, and welcome, form of payment.

[gramedia]

Resensi Pilihan: My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante

Ditulis oleh Sonya Clara di https://freycataleya.blogspot.co.id/?m=1 untuk program #ResensiPilihan di Twitter @Gramedia.

Sekitar satu tahun yang lalu lewat seorang sahabat karib dan berkat jasa jejaring media sosial, saya mendapat seorang teman baru berkebangsaan Italia. Sebut saja teman baru saya ini dengan inisial A. Seiring dengan pergeseran jaman dan bertambahnya usia, rasa-rasanya kian hari saya kian susah menemukan seorang teman yang sama-sama gemar membaca, apalagi dengan orang-orang yang mempunyai kecintaan dengan dunia literasi. Maka dari itu, betapa bahagianya saya ketika saya berkenalan dengan sosok A, yang ternyata juga maniak baca seperti saya.

Selama beberapa bulan sepanjang pertemanan kami, saya mendapatkan banyak referensi buku-buku yang bisa dibilang cukup out of the box dari A, dan bagi saya pecinta baru dunia literasi hal ini jelas menjadi oase tersendiri, hingga suatu ketika dia memperkenalkan saya pada eksistensi seorang penulis misterius bernama Elena Ferrante.

Melalui pembicaraan dengan si A, saya pun jadi makin penasaran dengan ketenaran seorang Elena Ferrante dan gaung kesuksesan dari karya tetraloginya yang berjudul Neapolitan series. Beberapa lama kemudian, saya mendapat kabar berita kalau buku pertama dari tetralogi tersebut, My Brilliant Friend dalam waktu dekat akan diterjemahkan ke dalam Bahasa Indonesia. Selang setengah tahun menunggu, ternyata ada seorang teman yang berprofesi sebagai editor berbaik hati mengirimkan kepada saya versi terjemahan dari My Brilliant Friend yang diterbitkan di Indonesia oleh Gramedia Pustaka Utama. Tentang Feminisme dan kepolosan dunia anak-anak miskin di Napoli. Delapan belas bab pertama membaca My Brilliant Friend, kita akan diajak untuk berkenalan dan melihat dunia kanak-kanak dari sesosok anak perempuan bernama Elena Greco ( yang kemudian lebih sering disebut dengan nama panggilan Lenu oleh sang penulis ) dan sahabat karibnya yang bernama Lila Cerullo. Terlahir sebagai anak-anak dari keluarga miskin di Napoli – Italia, Lenu dan Lila bisa dibilang sama-sama memiliki otak yang cerdas, namun justru dengan kepribadian yang amat sangat bertolak belakang satu sama lain. Bila Lenu cenderung pemalu, agak penakut, pendiam dan terkenal rajin belajar maka Lila adalah anak perempuan yang doyan berkelahi, badung dan tukang cari gara-gara. Akan tetapi, dibalik kekejaman dan kenekatan ala kanak-kanaknya, Lila adalah anak yang sangat jenius. Kemampuan otaknya bisa dibilang berada sangat jauh diatas rata-rata. Sederhananya, jika Lenu pintar karena dia memang banyak menghabiskan waktunya untuk belajar, maka Lila seolah tidak memerlukan usaha sama sekali untuk menjadi pintar. Seolah-olah gen untuk menjadi manusia jenius sudah tertanam di setiap sel-sel otaknya semenjak ia dilahirkan ke dunia.

Sayangnya, walaupun keduanya adalah anak-anak pintar namun keadaan kondisi lingkungan dan kemiskinan yang mencekik perekonomian kaum mayoritas kelas bawah Napoli menjadikan keduanya selalu dibayangi ketakutan dan sebuah realita pahit kalau suatu ketika akan tiba waktunya dimana para ayah akan kehabisan uang untuk membayar biaya sekolah mereka. Jika saat itu tiba maka sekolah pun hanya tinggal mimpi dan mereka harus mulai menyingsingkan lengan baju, bekerja membantu kedua orang tua menafkahi dan mengurus segala keperluan rumah tangga keluarga.

Seiring dengan berlalunya masa kanak-kanak ternyata Lenu bisa dikatakan sedikit lebih beruntung dari pada Lila, karena walau dengan ibu yang gemar menggerutu Lenu masih bisa meneruskan pendidikannya hingga ke jenjang Sekolah Menengah Atas. Berbeda dengan Lila, yang walau jelas-jelas memiliki otak yang brilliant namun harus terhenti langkahnya di tahap akhir Sekolah Dasar.

Napoli pada tahun 1950-an, apalagi bagi keluarga menengah ke bawah, kepandaian dalam dunia pendidikan terutama bagi kaum perempuan adalah sesuatu yang dianggap sama sekali tidak berguna. Seperti keluarga Lila contohnya. Terlahir dalam keluarga miskin pembuat sepatu konvensional membuat Fernando Cerullo, ayah Lila, menganggap kalau kepandaian anak perempuannya itu bukanlah sesuatu yang istimewa. Karena toh bagaimanapun juga pada akhirnya ia akan lebih membutuhkan tenaga anak perempuannya itu untuk membantu pekerjaannya di toko sepatu milik keluarganya daripada untuk bersekolah.  

Begitu juga dengan kedua orang tua Lenu, yang seolah ‘dipaksa’ untuk tetap menyekolahkan anak perempuannya itu hanya karena mereka merasa tidak tahan didesak terus menerus oleh Maestro Oliviero, salah seorang guru Lenu dan Lila di tingkat Sekolah Dasar.

Pada masa-masa selanjutnya, ada kalanya Lenu yang tidak sepandai Lila selalu mengalami naik turun dalam dunia studinya. Ada kalanya ketika Lenu harus mengalami keterpurukan, misalnya saja ketika ia harus berjuang dengan nilai-nilainya yang jeblok dalam pelajaran Bahasa Yunani dan Bahasa Latin. Namun ajaibnya.. ketika ia membicarakan permasalahannya dengan Lila, justru sahabatnya yang tidak tamat sekolah itu selalu bisa memberikan ‘kunci’ yang tepat bagi semua permasalahan akademiknya. Kunci-kunci rahasia yang memudahkan dirinya untuk mengejar ketertinggalannya dan menjadikannya siswi berprestasi gemilang di sekolahnya. Sesudah itu, selalu saja akan ada moment-moment berikutnya dimana Lenu hanya dapat melewati semua kesulitan dihidupnya dengan saran dan tuntunan dari seorang Lila.

Esensi dari persahabatan antara Lila dan Lenu bisa dikatakan dapat digambarkan dengan tepat sesuai dengan sebuah sajak pendek dari Faust yang ditulis oleh J.W Goethe dan dipilih diletakkan oleh Elena Ferrante di bagian awal cerita. Karena kendati keduanya saling membutuhkan dan terkoneksi satu sama lain, hubungan persahabatan antara Lila dan Lenu bisa dibilang juga banyak melibatkan konflik batin. Rasa persaingan, benci, afeksi, dan iri hati karena kelebihan dan kekurangan yang dimiliki oleh diri mereka masing-masing bisa dibilang adalah salah satu nyawa utama yang membangun pondasi bagi keseluruhan kisah dalam buku pertama ini.

Ada satu titik saat saya sangat terharu waktu membaca buku ini adalah ketika akhirnya Lila memutuskan untuk menikah dengan kekasih hatinya di usia muda, dan ketika ia berkata kepada Lenu kalau semua impiannya harus berakhir di bawah kakinya sendiri, seperti sepasang sepatu jelek yang dibuat oleh ayah dan kakak laki-lakinya.

Bagi saya yang juga seorang perempuan, tidak ada hal yang lebih menyedihkan di dunia ini dari pada kejadian yang dialami oleh Lila di buku ini. Ketika seorang perempuan cerdas harus rela membuang impiannya untuk menuntut ilmu hanya demi menikah dengan seorang lelaki yang notabene dapat menyelamatkan kehidupan ekonomi keluarganya. Sewaktu saya tiba di titik ini entah mengapa saya merasa kalau ada aura feminisme yang hendak ditampilkan oleh sang penulis di buku ini. Tentang cara pandang anak-anak terhadap Fasisme dan sejarah hitam Italia lainnya. Satu hal lagi yang menarik dari My Brilliant Friend adalah ketika dimana seorang Elena Ferrante menceritakan Lila dan Lenu yang mulai beranjak dewasa. Ketika jiwa-jiwa muda mereka mulai bertanya-tanya tentang arti dari percakapan orang-orang dewasa di sekeliling mereka. Lenu yang cenderung tertutup terkadang memilih untuk berdiam diri dalam ruang lingkup pemikirannya sendiri. Berbeda dengan Lila yang cenderung cerdas dan secara pemikiran lebih cepat dewasa dari teman-teman sebayanya. Dengan hati penuh tanya ia pun mulai membicarakan politik dengan beberapa teman laki-laki yang secara usia berada di atasnya dan mencari tahu tentang sejarah serta pemikiran-pemikiran apa yang selama ini tersirat dalam pembicaraan para orang-orang tua dan generasi yang lebih dewasa namun disaat yang bersamaan juga serasa ‘disembunyikan’ oleh masyarakat di lingkungannya. Sebuah rahasia tentang orang-orang kaya di pemukimannya yang kelak akan menjadi benang merah penting di buku-buku selanjutnya dan menjadi penyebab mengapa akhirnya Lila memilih untuk berontak melawan takdirnya.

Selain isu feminisme yang sempat saya jabarkan diatas, hal inilah yang membuat saya terkagum-kagum dengan Neapolitan series, khususnya My Brilliant Friend, yaitu bagaimana cara seorang penulis seperti Elena Ferrante memotret keambiguan pemikiran dari anak-anak Italia yang mulai mempertanyakan tentang teka-teki sejarah dari bangsanya sendiri. Tentang sejarah hitam dari bangsa mereka yang seolah disortir dan dipilih untuk dikubur dan dilupakan seiring dengan berlalunya waktu.

Akhir kata, setelah membaca My Brilliant Friend, saya pun ikut terpesona dan setidaknya jadi mengerti mengapa karya yang satu ini dan nama seorang Elena Ferrante dapat meninggalkan gaung yang begitu besar tidak hanya di daratan Eropa, namun bahkan hingga berdampak ke dunia literasi di Amerika dan banyak negara-negara lain di dunia. Karena bagi saya, My Brilliant Friend bukanlah hanya sekedar sebuah buku yang bertutur tentang lika-liku kehidupan dan persahabatan dua orang wanita saja. Karena di balik kesederhanaan narasinya, ternyata ada kisah tentang feminisme yang kompleks dan kepolosan pemikiran anak-anak dalam mempertanyakan eksistensi sejarah dari bangsanya sendiri. Dan hebatnya lagi, semua yang dikisahkan dalam buku pertama ini hanyalah merupakan sebuah kerangka awal dari sebuah rangkaian lukisan besar yang akan diungkapkan secara bertahap di buku-buku selanjutnya.

Info Buku:

Judul: Sahabatku Yang Brilian (My Brilliant Friend) Penulis: Elena Ferrante ISBN: 978-602-03-3559-9 Ukuran: 13.5x20 cm Tebal: 408 halaman Harga: Rp88.000,00

[artsvark]

Countdown to Tiger Bay the Musical

Tiger Bay the Musical

Sublime music, gripping story, outstanding international creative team and a star-studded cast – that’s Tiger Bay the Musical.

This marks the final leg of an epic journey for Michael Williams, the managing director of Cape Town Opera, who wrote the book and lyrics for Tiger Bay the Musical. Williams says: “The two-year journey of creating characters in my imagination now takes on a three-dimensional reality as a wonderful cast brings these characters to life. And finally, we will hear composer Daf James’ sparkling score leap from the page in all its glorious harmony!”

Leading the creative team, acclaimed director Melly Still is perfectly suited to tackling a family musical that explores gritty topics such as child labour, sexual equality and mixed race marriage. Still has worked as a director, choreographer, designer and adaptor for many companies including the National Theatre of Great Britain, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Most recently, Still directed the epic tetralogy of Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend, at the Rose Theatre – a celebrated five-hour event in the London theatre calendar.

Luvo Tamba

Ensuring that Tiger Bay the Musical has all the right moves is choreographer Kenneth Tharp OBE. Tharp has extensive experience in leading cross-disciplinary collaboration in the fields of dance, music and opera. As well as 25 years as a professional dancer, Tharp has choreographed more than 40 works, including the large-scale community opera Heroes Don’t Dance for London’s Royal Opera House.

In 2003, Tharp was made an OBE in recognition of his services to dance.

Designer Anna Fleischle’s superb credentials include numerous awards for the design of Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen at the Royal Court and subsequently in the West End. She won the Critics’ Circle Award 2015, the Evening Standard Award for Best Design 2015 and an Olivier Award for Best Set Design.

Leading the star-studded cast is Broadway musical sensation John Owen-Jones, who, with more than 2,000 performances in the role, is well known as the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera.

Judy Ditchfield

Cast alongside him is Vikki Bebb, a graduate of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. As well as a fantastic voice and acting talent, Bebb lends an authenticity to the role as she was born and raised in the Cynon Valley, like the fictional character she portrays.

The story of Tiger Bay the Musical is set in motion when a Zulu man, Themba, arrives in Tiger Bay seeking revenge for the horrific murder of his family in the Boer War. Playing this role is South African Luvo Tamba who recently drew widespread acclaim for his performance in the Isango Ensemble’s adaptation of Jonny Steinberg’s A Man of Good Hope.

Kenneth Tharp

Playing the roguish heart-throb Seamus O’Rourke is Noel Sullivan, a founding member of the pop group Hear’Say. Sullivan turned to musical theatre after the group disbanded, appearing in productions such as Fame, Love Shack and What a Feeling. He also performed the role of Danny Zuko in Grease at the Jersey Opera House.

Much-loved South African actress Judy Ditchfield — acclaimed for performances in Stander (2003), Faith’s Corner (2005) and u’Bejani (1997) — portrays a medium who channels the dead.

Tiger Bay the Musical offers fans of musical theatre the rare opportunity to attend opening performances of a large-scale new musical in Cape Town. Tiger bay the Musical will have a short run at Artscape from May 20-27 before transferring to the UK in late 2017.

Book now:

Until Sunday, April 9, you will get a 25% discount for the best seats in the house.

That means you will only pay R300 for seats that are normally priced at R400 — a saving of R100.

This special offer is limited to a maximum of four tickets per person.

To secure your early bird discounted seats, simply book through Computicket under the discount Early Bird Online, using the booking code EBS123.

  Countdown to Tiger Bay the Musical was originally published on Artsvark

[bigshoeswamp]

nothing does wlw homoerotic longing and stricking, heavy and exact descriptions of patriarchal society like the neapolitan tetralogy