Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Much has been written about the Neapolitan novels, so I would just like to add that I have been completely absorbed by the books (I am now reading the third), in which Elena Ferrante relentlessly explores all aspects of the friendship between Linu and Lila (and sets it against the background of Napoli in the restless sixties) demonstrating that we are shaped by those surrounding us as well as by the surroundings themselves. I am an avid reader and usually do not go for bestsellers, so these books took me by surprise; I have passionately loved many books but only few affected me the way these are affecting me. They make me look back at choices I made, at the different twists and turns my life took and see that they were influenced by seemingly irrelevant factors, that were I to describe them in the same minute detail as Elena Ferrante described Linu's and Lila's lives, they would produce and interesting novel, as would the lives of anybody else.