Elena Ferrante 🙇‍♂️🙇‍♂️😩😩

Maybe the worst classic I have read, ever. Yes, It comes from a very different moment in history, yet that doesn’t place it beyond the reach of my criticism.

The book is layered with sexism and with hints of anti-immigrant hate peppered on top. It was written for the aristocrats sitting in their royal palaces to feel validated for their greatness and proud of their white heritage. The book reads like a wannabe Shakespearean play but with no emotional depth and machismic prose that serves no purpose but to solidify the disconnect of the male characters from the peasants they are so abhorred by.

The book is written as if it is scared to cause any reaction in people. No character has any shade of personality trait. Every character of our lead bunch is a good person. Every woman in the book is prefaced with her being a "poor soul". Chapter 25 is full of discussions about "Brave men" who have given their lives and killed their own wives when time arrives to save them from the bad hands of enemy, said by a woman who has certainly done at least as much if not more than the Brave men she's glamourizing. The same woman is praised when she does something smart because she has "a man's brain".

There's this hilarious excitement in the end where the men are so stoked to kill the vampire, comparing it with a "call to war" whereas the woman in the group is kept uninformed because she is enchanted by the vampire.

I felt like I wasted hours reading something that does not offer anything worthwhile. I don't understand how this book is considered a classic.

Very basic fantasy with the simplest version of a "Hero's journey" plot, nothing too offensive, nothing too remarkable.

I mean, eh????? I too have played Silent Hill and made it my personality for a year but this just feels derivative. I like what the author does at the end though.