Best friends are definitely meant to be forever - Hindustan Times
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Best friends are definitely meant to be forever

Hindustan Times | BySeema Goswami
May 23, 2015 03:35 PM IST

You may ignore the importance of female friendship – but you certainly can’t deny it as they are the most special

Over the last few days I have been immersed in Elena Ferrante’s novel, My Brilliant Friend. The book is best summed up as an ode to female friendship, with all its ups and downs, highs and lows, tantrums and tears, laughter and fear.



The story revolves around two young girls, Lenu and Lina, growing up in a rough neighbourhood in Naples, who establish a wary friendship as children. But in telling their tale through the prism of the traumas and triumphs of their relationship, Ferrante delves deep into some of the universal truths of the nature of friendship (and its limits).



Reading it late into the night, I began to think about how much we neglect the importance of same-sex friendships because of our very modern obsession with romantic love (or even sexual desire).



But however much we ignore it, we cannot deny the importance of friendship in our lives: the relationship of a child with an elderly neighbour; of a teacher with a favourite pupil; of the man who lives alone with his dog; and of course, that which springs up between two women.



Of all of these, female friendships are the most special, I think (yes, yes, I know, that makes me a sexist so-and-so). And never is their intensity more marked than in childhood and adolescence – that is, before romantic love rears its unruly head.

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