My Brilliant Friend

As girls, Elena and Lila play in the courtyard with their dolls, in response to one another but not together. Elena’s doll, Tina, is attractive, whereas Lila’s doll, Nu, is homely. The girls feel scared and ignorant, almost believing that their dolls know more than they do. “It seemed to us that we were always going toward something terrible that had existed before us yet had always been waiting for us, just for us” (29). One day, when the girls exchange their dolls, Lila pushes Tina through the cellar grate, letting her “fall into the darkness” (31). 

When Elena and Lila first meet, in the first grade, Lila impresses Elena with her spectacular misdemeanor in class. In one instance, Lila’s antics result in the

teacher, Maestra Oliviero, slipping, being knocked unconscious, and lying motionless on the floor. Elena is startled but not traumatized because she considers her world to be one “in which children and adults were often wounded, blood flowed from the wounds, they festered and sometimes people died” (32). A climate of fear and awareness of all the phenomena that can end lives are prevalent in their poor Neapolitan neighborhood.

A loyalty based on respect, fear, and competition emerges between Lila and Elena, who protect each other in the face of the other children’s violence. Nevertheless, Elena, who is fearful, considers Lila to be fearless.

Elena is alarmed by her parents’ anger towards Don Achille and worries that their brutal words will reach his ears and that he will come and murder them. Elena is not exactly sure what Don Achille has done, but he “had supposedly revealed himself in all his monstrous nature before we were born” (36). There is a rumor that he beat up Signor Peluso outside a church during mass and left him bleeding and unconscious. Lila is less concerned with what happened before; rather, it is the present day that makes her nervous.

Elena reflects on the violence of her childhood and the fact that children “grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before [others] made it difficult for us” (37). It was not only the men and children who fought but the women too. Melina Cappuccio and Lidia Sarratore, for example, fought over the latter’s husband, Donato Sarratore. The vicious rivalry is discussed amongst the neighbors. Most of the girls at school prefer Lidia because she is a legitimate wife and has well-groomed children, including Nino, whom all the girls consider handsome. Melina, on the other hand, is a poor widow who has lost her reason. Lila, however, prefers Melina and even goes as far as to beat up Lidia’s daughter Marisa when she calls Melina a whore. 

After Lila’s mother, Nunzia Cerullo, gives a gift of coffee and sugar to Maestra Oliviero, the teacher begins to praise Lila in school. Though Elena thinks that she is the best student in the class, Maestra Oliviero begins to say that Lila is better. Lila claims that she taught herself to read and received no assistance from anyone in her family. 

There is a mystery surrounding how Lila learned to read. Lila’s older brother, Rino, wishes to take the credit, claiming that she learned around the age of three by looking at the pictures in his primer. Elena believes that Lila “precociously learned how the alphabet worked from the sheets of newspaper in which customers wrapped their shoes” (44). Elena is agitated by Lila’s prodigiousness. She herself has always preferred school to home, being fond of learning and pleasing the teacher. Even as a 6-year-old girl, Elena has issues with her mother, who makes her feel “superfluous.” At the same time, Elena finds her mother unattractive because of her mismatched eyes and limp (44). Elena is terrified of becoming limp like her mother and decides to “model” herself on Lila so as to escape this unwanted fate (46). 

Elena strives to keep pace with Lila, who outshines all the other pupils, even as she misbehaves. But Lila is “beyond any possible competition” in both her arithmetic and vocabulary (48). Unlike Elena, Lila does not care how likeable she is and when she enters into a fierce arithmetic competition with Enzo Scanno, she beats him. From then on, the boys begin to throw rocks at Lila and Elena.

Lila can “ration the use of her abilities” so as not to beat Don Achille’s son Alfonso Carracci for fear of trouble with the family (51). Elena suspects that Nino, whom she loves, has also remained quiet and allowed Alfonso to progress for this reason. When Alfonso’s elder brother, Stefano, catches up with Lila in the street, they yell obscenities at each other and he threatens to prick her tongue with a pin. A whole series of neighborhood feuds break out, involving Lila’s and Alfonso’s families as well as Enzo Scanno, son of the fruit and vegetable seller. The fights end because Enzo does not tell his family that Lila’s brother Rino beat him up after he hit Lila in the head with a stone. 

Lila keeps subjecting Elena to “proofs of courage that had nothing to do with school” (54). Lila’s throwing of Elena’s doll into the grate is one such test as, despite her “violent pain” at the thought of her doll in Don Achille’s hands, Elena is incited to copy Lila’s ruthlessness (54). When the girls sneak into the terrifying cellar in search of the dolls, they cannot find them.

Elena’s fear and malaise following the doll incident is such that when her crush, Nino Sarratore, asks her to marry him when they’re older, she says no even though she means yes. Meanwhile, the Sarratore family moves out of the neighborhood to escape Melina Cappuccio’s persecutions. In a wrathful outburst, Melina throws objects from the window onto the street. One narrowly misses Nino’s head.

While Elena receives admiration from the neighborhood boys, Lila does not, garnering only “admiration and respect” from Enzo, who gives her a garland of sorb apples (61). Initially Lila refuses them, and Elena hopes Lila will give them to her. Instead, Lila puts a nail in the window and hangs her apple garland from it. 

Maestra Oliviero wants only the best students to take the exam for the middle school. These are Gigliola Spagnuolo, Lila, and Elena. Elena’s parents are reluctant, owing to the cost of paying Maestra Oliviero for Latin lessons, but they eventually allow their daughter to study for the test. Lila’s parents, however, refuse, even though the teacher insists on Lila’s aptitude. Lila tells Elena that she will take the test anyway, and Elena believes her, feeling that “every prohibition lost substance in her presence” (64). 

It is Lila’s idea that the girls should go to Don Achille’s and ask for their dolls back. Elena is terrified, but Lila fearlessly accuses Don Achille of taking the dolls. Don Achille responds by giving the girls money to buy new dolls and asks them to remember that the gift is from him. 

Elena and Gigliola go to Maestra Oliviero’s for their lessons. Lila cannot attend because her parents have not paid. Lila buys Little Women with the money Don Achille gave her. She and Elena read the book until it becomes tattered.

Lila’s father, Fernando Cerullo, is opposed to her furthering her schooling because she is a girl, even though her brother, Rino, defends her and says that, if his father paid him, he could fund Lila’s education.

Lila wants to write a novel with Elena, but Elena does not have enough time. Lila writes a book, The Blue Fairy, that is full of long words. Maestra Oliviero is unimpressed and would rather Lila studied for her diploma. The teacher also stops praising Lila in class even though she displays “excesses of virtuosity,” and thus Lila loses energy for her lessons (72).

Before Elena is to sit for the final test, at Lila’s instigation, the two girls skip school and venture beyond the boundaries of the neighborhood for the first time. They are not very excited by what they see; “trained by our schoolbooks to speak with great skill about what we had never seen, we were excited by the invisible” (74). They plan to go to the sea the next day and set off early, holding hands. However, when the rainclouds lower over them, Lila becomes suddenly agitated and insists they go home. An emboldened Elena is confused as to why.

When Elena’s mother learns what the girls have been up to, she gives Elena a beating and encourages her husband to do the same. Lila’s reaction to Elena’s bruises is to be surprised that Elena got away so lightly; after all, her parents are still allowing her to study Latin for the middle school exam. This response prompts Elena to question whether Lila suggested the expedition only to sabotage Elena’s chances. On the other hand, perhaps Lila insisted they return home prematurely so that Elena might evade the punishment of having her Latin lessons taken away.

Lila runs out of steam for pursuing her elementary school diploma. She earns 9s and an 8 on the exam, while Elena surprises everyone by getting all 10s.

Lila goes off with Carmela Peluso, isolating Elena. Lila is agitated, declaring that she wants to go to the middle school even if she did not take the test for it. She lashes out at her parents, shouting vulgar obscenities in Neapolitan dialect. Her father punishes her by throwing her “like a thing” out the window. Lila insists that she is okay, but she has broken her arm.

Fernando Cerullo is remorseful for his violence toward Lila and unable “even to look at his daughter as long as her arm was in the cast” (83). Elena considers her father’s act nothing compared to the murder of Don Achille, on a rainy August day, at the hand of a mysterious assassin. Lila is impressed by the story of the murder and recounts it as though she had been present. She genders the murderer female so that she can identify with her. One day, when Lila and Elena are at Carmela’s, her father, Alfredo Peluso, is dragged away on suspicion of Don Achille’s murder. Elena and Carmela are inconsolable, but Lila is stoic, suspicious that Alfredo is not the real killer.