I don’t know how to start this review because im so profoundly affected by the book I just read that to explain why would literally be writing it all over again but worse. I feel like this is the type of book that creeps up on you in that the actual reading — the words, the way Ferrante (& translator Goldstein) constructs these sentences — is very pleasurable of course but you don’t realize how much so until you leave it behind. I feel like the best way i can describe my immediate gut reaction closing the book is mourning? Mourning my two brilliant friends who are no longer in my life?

Okay another thing I love: the way Ferrante’s storytelling feels SO naturalistic, with things weaving in and out of your life instead of it being very “this thing happened with a rising action a climax and a falling action and then this thing happened” which don’t get me wrong im not disparaging. But I adored the feeling of reading about Elena & Lila’s lives and going “!!!” when something came back into the story in a way that echoed. (I’m writing this very freely so forgive me if this doesn’t make sense) but I think that’s what I love - the way things echo in this book, the past “before them” that Elena and Lila cannot know and then what eventually becomes THEIR past. And I think I just love how… YEAH. THAT IS HOW IT IS. THAT REALLY *IS* HOW IT IS TO BE A YOUNG GIRL AND THEN A SLIGHTLY OLDER GIRL AND TO HAVE A FRIEND LIKE THAT. who’s brilliant because they are just good at things and just good in ways that you’re not and they’re just GOOD, even when you’re not, who’s both, you know, brilliant dazzling, but also THE LITERAL SUN to you. And this isn’t really a spoiler but im still marking it because

ohhhh my god they are EACH OTHERS BRILLIANT FRIEND and they are each other’s “childish folly” they have to outgrow im gonna start crying and throwing up FOILS in the most tragic painful way possible because they didn’t have to be. but they also did have to be. They could have continued to play dolls together for the rest of time but also that is a fairytale world that couldn’t have been.

Selin found dead in a ditch