Do you know anyone  who’s just obsessed with what they were like as a little kid? They can talk for hours about their elementary school teachers, their friends from the neighborhood, first crushes, friendship betrayals, every time their parents were unfair to them, how mean their siblings could be, etc? Aren’t they just exhausting?

My Brilliant Friend is the first volume of Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, which followst two female friends throughout their entire lives. At the beginning, set in 2010, 60-something Elena Greco receives word that her friend Lila has seemingly vanished off the face of the planet. Not in the least surprised, Elena nevertheless begins reflecting on her friendship with Lila, going back to their childhood days in a working-class neighborhood of 1950s Naples. Lila and Lenu (as Elena is called) couldn’t be more different. Though each demonstrates sharp intelligence in school, Lila is supremely confident and self-assured, while Lenu is a ball of nerves. Lila has a way of compelling people to go along with her, and Lenu is no exception. Lenu is cowed by her parents expectations of her, while at times it seems like Lila is really running the show at her house.

Through Lenu, Ferrante provides the reader with a torrent of information and incidents which, brick by brick, lay the foundation for Lila and Lenu’s deep bond of friendship. How the reader bears up under such a deluge will be largely a matter of personal taste. I found it a bit difficult to maintain interest in the petty schoolyard dramas between the neighborhood children. However, the dramatic events within Lila’s family are of far more interest to me.

The relationship between Lila and Lenu is a tough one to grapple with. While friendships certainly can be complex, Ferrante pours it on so much that it makes it fair to wonder why these two girls stayed friends with each other. Lila, frankly, is a lot.

One thing I will say for Ferrante is that she knows how to end a story. After a lengthy stretch of tiresome, repetitive drama that had me wondering what on earth the New York Times was thinking when it named My Brilliant Friend the best book of the 21st Century, the final button on Lila’s story in this volume was a truly devastating image, the kind that lingers. It might even be enough to get me to read the second volume.