A review by erebus53
The Neapolitan Novels: My Brilliant Friend, the Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay & the Story of the Lost Child: The BBC Radio by Elena Ferrante

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Interesting look at Italy and the politics of Feminism and Unionisation, Fascism, and Class politics.
The friendship and rivalry between two gifted girls highlights the disparity of their families' wealth as one goes on to being an author and the other is trapped working in a factory under untenable conditions. 
  
My only concern with listening to this version dramatised by the BBC was that, by the length of it, the content appears to have been abridged to about one quarter the length of the original text, making it closer to the length of one book than the original collection of four whole books.. so I don't really know what I'm missing out on.
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