My Brilliant Friend (The Neapolitan Novels, #1)

Nicole Baldinu I didn’t want this book to end. And I’ve gone back and listened to the audio version in Italian too. I’m lucky that my second language is Italian, as I got to enjoy it twice over! This book was wildly successful and for good reasons, it has everything you’d want in a story, love, friendship, history, humor, sadness and tragedy. All in four delicious volumes that, again, you wish would keep going and going. (Source)

Flora Pringle I think Elena Ferrante writes brilliantly about the challenges of motherhood and building something for yourself. In the Neapolitan Novels she talks about her character breaking out of her poor, restrictive, mafia background through reading and learning. She breaks her boundaries and becomes an accomplished writer. In the third book particularly, Elena speaks fluently about the envy we feel of the accomplishments of others, the insecure we feel even in the traits that others so admire about us. The frustrations of motherhood and how it can impinge professional accomplishments whether we want... (Source)