My Brilliant Friend

Elena breaks up with Gino because he embarrasses her when he laughs at Alfonso Carracci for bursting into tears following a Greek interrogation. Meanwhile, Lila has received two marriage proposals, one from Pasquale Peluso and the other from Marcello Solara. She refuses Pasquale cordially, telling him that she loves him as she does her brother. She refuses Marcello more directly, saying “you’re an animal, you and your family, your grandfather, your brother, and I would never be engaged to you even if you tell me you’ll kill me” (185). She points out his bestiality—for instance, forcing Ada Cappuccio into his car, and shooting a gun on fireworks night. He slinks away ashamed, while Lila tells the whole neighborhood how she refused Marcello Solara.

Elena is excelling in high school and has even attracted the attention of Professor Galiani, “a woman who was highly regarded and yet avoided, because she was said to be a Communist” (188). Professor Galiani praises Elena’s concept that a city without love is a people deprived of happiness—an idea conceived during a previous conversation with Lila. These days, however, Lila has renounced reading, and Elena feels “a growing sense of solitude” in her learning (189).

Lila reveals that, while Pasquale has resigned himself to defeat, Marcello continues to pursue her; he follows her around, trying to look at her. She worries what will happen if either Rino or her father find out.

Rino, Pasquale, Carmela, Lila, and Elena take a day trip outside their neighborhood. On the way out, they spot the Solaras zooming past in the Fiat 1100, with Gigliola and Ada as passengers. Later, when the group arrives in the neighborhood of Via Chiaia, the girls are struck by how well-dressed and different the wealthier people are. “They seemed to have breathed another air, to have eaten other food, to have dressed on some other planet, to have learned to walk on wisps of wind” (192). When an attractive, preppy couple walk by, Rino makes a vulgar comment about the girl and a fight breaks out. The girls are unable to stop the fight and, as it escalates, Rino tries to send them home. However, directed by Lila, the girls stay and watch. The Solaras turn up, and Marcello inserts himself into the fight. It escalates considerably, and Michele jumps in wielding a giant metal bar. Eventually, the other gang retreats. The girls catch a ride home in the Fiat 1100. Afterwards, Elena says that it was lucky that the Solaras were there, or Pasquale and Rino may have been killed. Lila does not agree but will not explain her reasoning.

Elena goes to see Maestra Oliviero, who introduces the idea of Elena spending her summer holiday on the island of Ischia where the teacher’s cousin lives. She does not mention the offer to Lila.

Marcello Solara begins a friendship with Rino, and Rino invites him to the Cerullos’ for dinner. Lila is furious and even jokes about putting poison in Marcello’s food. Elena is there to observe how Marcello does most of the talking and how Lila provokes him at every turn. When Marcello learns of the shoes Lila and Rino made (in his size: 43), Lila is sent off to find them. She disappears instead, so Marcello leaves. Afterward, Lila calls Elena upstairs and confesses that she cannot bear the thought of Marcello touching the shoes. When Lila reappears to the family, both Fernando and Rino are furious with her and there is an exchange of threats and insults. Lila’s mother Nunzia puts an end to the “torture” by threatening to jump out the window if anyone utters another word (204).

Rino continues to beat up Lila, and there is an argument about the shoes and whether the Cerullos should go into business with the Solaras. Fernando decides to put the shoes in the window to see who will buy them. Marcello walks by the store, tries on the shoes, declares they are too tight and walks away. Then, he comes by a second time and asks Fernando for Lila’s hand in marriage. 

Fernando encourages Lila to accept Marcello’s proposal because it “was important not only for her future but for that of the whole family” (206). He tries to soften the blow, by saying she can have a long engagement at home. Lila refuses emphatically. Elena and Lila discuss how she can get out of the engagement.

At the Grecos’ house, Maestra Oliviero tells Elena’s mother that Elena is looking worn out and must go to Ischia to stay with a cousin of hers. Elena’s mother grumbles, but unable to refuse the teacher, accompanies her daughter to the ferry. Elena is excited to be going on a journey away from home for the first time.

Elena stays with the cousin, Nella Incardo. Elena’s bed is in the kitchen, and she has a few housekeeping duties in Nella’s hotel but also more free time than she has ever had. Elena writes to Lila, but her letters remain unanswered, giving the impression that her “life was splendid but uneventful” while Lila’s “was dark and full” (211). Nella makes Elena a new bathing suit, and Elena remembers that she really can swim and that her mother took her to the beach as a child. Nella reports that a nice family is coming to stay with them. The family turns out to be Donato Sarratore’s.

Elena is in deep anticipation of Nino Sarratore’s visit, but his family arrives without him. Nino’s sister, Marisa, explains that he will only come when their father leaves. Maria characterizes Nino as selfish and studious. She reports that her brother has noticed Elena at school and knows she used to go out with Gino. Donato is charming, extremely playful, and courteous, and Elena cannot imagine why Nino would not like him.

When Nino eventually arrives, he is at first dismissive of Elena and barely engages with his family. Later, he begins to talk with Elena about their readings. Nino says that, as a boy, he had greatly envied the relationship between Lila and Elena and would have liked to have been part of it. When he made that childish marriage proposal to Elena, he “thought we would become engaged and we would all three be together forever, you, me, and your friend” (219). Elena is jealous at Nino’s praise of Lila’s intelligence and stops writing letters home to Lila. Nino confesses that he hates his father because of his hypocrisy; he seems dutiful and pleasant, all the while betraying his wife and bedding the mentally fragile Melina Cappuccio “out of pure vanity” (221). Nino kisses Elena very lightly on the lips and says he is leaving the next day.

Elena cries when Nino leaves and misses him as she falls asleep. Elena reflects that Nino, like Lila, has “something that is eating him inside” (225). Also like Lila, he has no need of anyone. When Donato returns, in place of Nino, Elena is surprised that this poet never reads a book, only the newspaper Roma, in which he has written a poetic article about the speed of different modes of transport.

Lila writes back to Elena in a style “that left no trace of effort, you weren’t aware of the artifice of the written word” (227). Elena then feels insecure about her own writing. However, Lila tells of how, with Fernando’s consent, Marcello shows up at their house every day between 8:30 and 10:30. He has given the Cerullos a television; it is one of the first in the neighborhood. Lila says that she likes to watch the television with Melina because it gives her a “moment of peace” in an otherwise fractious life, where Rino is angry with her because she has abandoned him to be his father’s slave and her parents are angry because she is unkind to Marcello (228). Marcello meanwhile torments her, saying that he will kill her if he hears any reports that she likes someone else. Lila tells Elena that she needs her, but also urges her to never return to the neighborhood again.

Elena vows to return to the neighborhood prematurely, feeling that her experiences at the beach have been trivial in contrast to Lila’s. On her final night, the Sarratores celebrate Elena’s fifteenth birthday. That night, Donato walks into the kitchen where Elena is sleeping. He urges her not to go home, kisses her and touches her breast and underpants. Elena feels “terrified by that behavior, by that horror it created, by the pleasure that I nevertheless felt” (232). After the incident she cannot bring herself to tell anyone, for the shame of it—until this unexpected moment so many years later when, as an adult, she is writing about it.

Elena returns to the neighborhood, where her “shining blonde” hair and “dark gold” tan set her apart from her pallid neighbors (233). Lila is ecstatic to see Elena as her parents are entreating her to accept Marcello. And Rino, though he has begun to defend Lila, continues to behave erratically. Meanwhile, Stefano Carracci gives them a spin in his flashy new car. Elena is terrified that Marcello will see them, but they avoid the Solaras’ bakery. Lila asks Stefano if he is really different from the Solaras, and he responds cryptically: “The intention is there, but I don’t know how it will end up” (239). Lila challenges him to buy the shoes she and Rino made, and he immediately parks the car in front of the shoe shop.  

At the shoe shop, where both Fernando and Rino are present, Stefano not only buys the shoes but asks to see the designs that Lila and Rino have executed for both men’s and women’s shoes. As the shoes are tight, Fernando will put them on a machine to widen them. Stefano takes the designs, saying that he can make money out of them. Lila confronts him and says that she cannot be bought. Stefano says he will return in three days. Elena is certain now that the drive in Stefano’s car “had been a sort of agreement reached at the end of many encounters, much talk” (243). 

Elena is recruited as an accomplice in plotting to get Marcello out of Lila’s life. Lila vows she will become engaged to Stefano, if only to rid herself of Marcello. Stefano buys the shoes Lila and Rino designed for twenty five thousand lire and adds another twenty thousand for Lila’s drawings. He intends to frame the drawings and put them in the Cerullos’ shop. He says he will help the Cerullos expand their business; Fernando is to choose the workers and Stefano will pay them.

Marcello complains to Nunzia about Lila’s going to Stefano’s grocery and even goes so far as to claim Elena is not a good companion for Lila. Elena observes how practical Lila has become. While, as a girl, she thought she and Elena would write a novel along the lines of Little Women,now she’s focused on financial security, which “incarnated in Stefano, was taking the form of a young man in a greasy apron, was gaining features […] was a man we had known forever, the oldest son of Don Achille” (249). Stefano visits Fernando to ask for Lila’s hand in marriage. When Fernando refuses, saying that Lila is already engaged to Marcello, Stefano insists that Lila should be the one to decide. Lila offers to be the person to disappoint Marcello.

At dinner the next evening, Lila asks Marcello to take her out for an ice cream. He is delighted at this opportunity to be alone with her, but she tells him that she loves Stefano rather than him. Marcello threatens to kill them both, but he cannot because he loves her too much. Lila tells him that he had better not try to kill anyone else while she is still alive, or she will kill all of his own, beginning with him. Marcello slinks off, brokenhearted. 

Elena considers that all seems to be going well for Lila, with her wealthy fiancé and the expansion of her family business, while she is slaving away at school. She befriends Stefano’s brother, Alfonso, a gentle soul, as a way to distract herself for her painful feelings toward Nino: “Seeing him brought immediately to mind Donato Sarratore, even if they didn’t resemble each other at all” (255). Elena finds herself confronted with a mixture of repulsion and trauma, especially when she spots Donato in his conductor’s uniform in the streets of Naples.

Elena feels that her fate and Lila’s will forever be in opposition: “it was as if, because of an evil spell, the joy or sorrow of one required the sorrow or joy of the other” (257). Lila’s satisfaction has magnified her beauty, whereas Elena feels that she herself is becoming uglier as her pallor, acne, and darkened hair return. Then she has to get glasses, which makes her feel worse about her looks. One day, she leaves the spectacles on her desk. When she goes to collect them, she finds the lenses smashed. She fears the wrath of her parents, who have already expressed their indignation at this extra expense. When Elena tells Lila, Lila takes the glasses away. She returns the next day with the mended spectacles. Apparently she asked Stefano to take them to an optician in town. 

Given that Lila is winning in the material stakes, Elena tries to reassure herself that her own “wealth” is her schooling (259). She enjoys what she is learning but feels she has no companion with whom to discuss her findings. Whenever she brings up academic subjects with Lila, Lila feigns boredom and draws attention to her gifts from Stefano. Discouraged, Elena gives up on her efforts to engage Lila with her schooling.