I just read two books back to back that made me realize there is this whole genre of books with a similar form. I have read many of them over the years, but never realized what they were. I decided to call this genre Brilliant Friends books after Elena Ferrante’s magical Neapolitan Quartet and its first book My Brilliant Friend. The stories are all told by an adult woman looking back on an intense high school friendship that was formative, changing their lives in some way or another. The narrator is the more subdued friend, the quiet one, the follower who is remembering the brilliant, defiant, bold, brave and ultimately tragic friend. Tragedy can take many forms, not just death, but always, the narrator ends in a better place than the brilliant friend. Thinking about it, both the books I just read (Marlena and Please Proceed to the Exit) fit that model but not just them. There’s The Girls by Emma Cline, The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel, even All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda, a mystery has the brilliant friend disappear, runaway or murder victim.
Brilliant Friends
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thought I blogged this a week ago. Oops! First, I have to deal with the quote I used for the title. The internet is a disaster for quote lovers and this is an example of why. Which Helen Thompson? My guess this quote may have come from the wife of the race horse trainer, David Thompson. I am pretty darn sure it did not come from 
My great-niece recently rescued a couple horses from a kill pen, the third generation of horse rescuers in my family. Kill pen horses are usually sold for pet food because they are considered problematic, untrainable, vicious and dangerous. They usually require a level of training most people just will not invest. In time, though, they can learn to trust and be trusted. If you want to see the evidence, see my great-grand niece cleaning this rescued horse’s hooves just two weeks into training…and the foundations for a fourth generation of rescuers begins. It was thinking about them, the work they are doing, and that two other nieces are doing, that I thought I might take this month’s house from Barnesworth for Collabor88 and set up a farm. I tinted it, one of the things I love about Barnesworth homes.
