My Brilliant Friend

Back in the narrative timeline, Lila is sent to a special trade school to learn stenography and book-keeping, but she keeps truanting and eventually fails the year. Elena also does badly in her first year of middle school because she is intimidated by the better pupils. When a teacher from the school summons Elena’s mother, reporting that Elena has passed by the skin of her teeth, her mother suggests that she quit school. Elena’s father thinks she should get another chance.

Meanwhile, Elena gets her period and does not understand what is happening to her body. She wishes to speak to Lila, but Carmela is there too and it is the latter who explains. Carmela, who also has her period, claims she is in love with Alfonso Carracci, son of Don Achille, whom her father allegedly murdered.

Elena finds the transition to puberty a miserable ordeal. And, despite her hard work, she is struggling in both Math and Latin. She worries about turning into her mother, “lame, with a crossed eye, and no one would love me anymore” (96). Still, in a moment of bravado, when the neighborhood boys say they have placed a bet on whether Elena’s breasts are real or made of stuffing, she lifts up her shirt to show them. It is the first time she realizes the power her body wields over men. She wishes she could talk to Lila but is afraid to approach her.

Lila, who has failed school for the second time, talks with enthusiasm about her father’s shoemaking. Elena is bored and miserable at school; she watches Lila through the shop window and finds herself talking with Carmela about beautiful shoes. She realizes that “I was trying to make Lila’s new passion my own” (100). 

Elena offers, “I soon had to admit that what I did myself couldn’t excite me, only what Lila touched became important” (100). Everything feels unexciting to Elena without Lila’s participation. Gino, the pharmacist’s son, asks to be her boyfriend. While Elena is inclined to say no, Lila tells Elena she should agree if he will buy the two of them and Carmela ice cream all summer. Following this entreaty, Gino vanishes. 

Given that Elena has an average of 6, with 4 in Latin, she will not be able to continue in middle school unless she passes an exam. The family cannot afford a tutor, but her mother implores her to study for the exam, saying “nowhere is it written that you can’t do it” (105). Lila meanwhile asks Elena to bring her Latin books to the public gardens once a day, and the two girls study together.

While Lila and Elena study Latin in the public gardens, the neighborhood around them is changing. The Solaras, who own the bar-pastry shop, and the Carraccis, who own the grocery, emerge as outstanding families. Lila excels as a self-taught Latin student and chastises Elena when she falls behind.

When school begins, Elena does well, becoming first in class. Elena who “expanded like pizza dough” and has developed a womanly figure, is offered a ride in the dashing Solara brothers’ Fiat 1100 (112). Elena refuses the offer on a point of honor; her father would have broken both her legs, and her younger brothers would have been obliged to kill the Solara brothers. On the other hand, Ada Cappuccio, Melina’s daughter, has no such protection and so is pulled into the Solaras’ car. Lila reasons that the Solaras will leave Ada alone, because she is undeveloped.

Lila invents a pair of shoes from scratch, and her brother Rino wants to help her make them, but their father discourages the effort. 

While Elena has begun to do well at school, her academic prowess does not count in the courtyard where the other girls only want to talk about boys. Insecure about her looks, Elena becomes withdrawn and stays in, reading classic novels.

Although Elena’s parents have notions that she ought to work in a stationary shop, Maestra Oliviero recommends that Elena keep studying and enter a classical high school. When Maestra Oliviero spies Elena alone with Carmela’s brother Pasquale Peluso, she warns Elena to stay away from the “communist and son of a murderer” (124). Elena, however, is captivated by the thought of a boy with those forbidden attributes. When he invites her and Lila to Gigliola Spagnuolo’s for a dancing lesson, she agrees. 

Maestra Oliviero makes Elena’s parents swear they will enroll their daughter in the nearest classical high school. Meanwhile, Melina is ecstatic because Donato Sarratore, who has moved his family out of the neighborhood, has sent her a book of his poems, with a dedication. Elena is amazed that Donato, a person from their neighborhood, published a book. She determines to write one herself. 

Elena sneaks off to meet Pasquale and tells him all about her idea of writing a book. Pasquale, however, only seems interested in asking about Lila. When the two go to the shoe shop, he looks “furtively” at Lila (128). Elena notices that Lila is becoming attractive, “changing, and not only physically, but in the way she expresses herself” (130). Elena realizes that Pasquale is interested in Lila and not her.

Rino chastises Lila and Elena for their gossip about Donato Sarratore and Melina. Elena realizes she must leave the shoe shop, upset that “Lila would do great things by herself” (132). As Elena is leaving, Lila tells her that she has also started her period.

As Lila is now becoming a woman, Elena’s entry into high school begins to lose its aura. Out on the sidewalk, the Solara brothers offer to give Elena and Lila a ride in their Fiat. The girls decline, but Michele Solara fiddles with Elena’s bracelet until it falls to the ground and breaks. Lila slides a knife under Michele’s throat and threatens him. 

The summer before Elena goes to high school, her father takes her with him to work and shows her which public transportation she should take to go to the classical high school. Elena notes, “We spent the entire day together, the only one in our lives” (136). As she walks about Naples with her father, it seems to Elena that “the rest of the city was radiant, benevolent,” while their part is squalid and violent (137). She wishes Lila were with her to see the ocean waves and Mount Vesuvius. When she tries to tell Lila about the city sights later on, Lila is not much interested, preferring instead to focus on the activity in the neighborhood.

The two friends go to Gigliola’s for dancing, and Rino and Pasquale teach them the steps. Elena discovers that she loves to dance, while Lila “wore the expression of someone who wants to understand how it’s done, and whose pleasure seems to consist entirely in learning, since she often stayed seated” studying the couples (140). They practice dancing and Lila wishes for a “gramophone,” noting that this is a Greek word. Greek is the language Elena will learn in the classical high school and the one Lila is learning for herself. 

Elena is shocked that Lila has already begun to study Greek before she herself has even gone to high school. “Would she always do the things I was supposed to do, before and better than me?” (141-42). When Elena goes to the library to get a Greek grammar book, she finds it has been apparently been reserved for all four members of the Cerullo family and will not be available for the duration of the summer. Elena thinks about avoiding Lila but then goes to find her and lets her teach her both Greek and dance steps. Elena also feels ugly and inadequate next to Lila who is slender and graceful and attracts the attention of all the men. She has “an energy that dazed them, like the swelling sound of beauty arriving” (143).

Lila and Elena are permitted to go out at night, accompanied by Rino and other neighborhood youth. When a pizza man blows Lila a kiss after they have been exchanging glances, Pasquale defensively slaps the man in the face. While Elena and the other girls look away, Lila courts trouble by returning every look that is addressed to her and responding to comments. She is immune to the obscenities men address to the other girls. Rino feels obliged to defend Lila and fights break out.

At a party given by Gigliola’s mother, Rosa Spagnuolo, there are traditional dances and rock and roll. Though Lila does not know how to dance rock and roll, when she stands up with Enzo Scanno, she gains everyone’s attention. Both Stefano Carracci and Marcello Solara are captivated with Lila’s “lithe and elegant body, by her face, which was unusual in the neighborhood and perhaps in the whole city of Naples” (149). There is a queue of men who want to dance with Lila: Pasquale Peluso, Stefano, and Marcello. Pasquale dances with her first. Michele Solara challenges Stefano to intervene given that Pasquale is the Communist son of Stefano’s father’s murderer. Stefano is incensed but says that Pasquale should be allowed to dance because he is a good dancer.

Lila, meanwhile, fired by the desire to dance, goes ahead and partners with Marcello though she detests him. The air is charged with tension and Elena feels a fight is brewing. Lila dances with Marcello a second time. Pasquale tells Elena it’s time to go, but she wants to wait for Lila. When Lila finishes dancing with Marcello and tries to leave, he holds her by the arm. Lila is suddenly repulsed by the fact that he has actually touched her. Elena is puzzled, wondering whether it was possible that Lila did not realize that she has just danced with Marcello twice.

Outside, Pasquale shouts that the Solaras’ bar had always been a place for loan sharks from the Camorra (a malevolent Neapolitan gang), that it was the base for collecting votes for the monarchists, and that Don Achille had been a spy for Nazi fascists. He says his father was right to kill Don Achille. The girls, even Lila, begin weeping. Pasquale breaks it off when he sees her crying. Lila asks him on the way home who the Nazi Fascists and monarchists are. 

Lila is moved by Pasquale’s answers to her questions and comes to the conclusion that “there are no gestures, words, or sighs that do not contain the sum of all the crimes that human beings have committed and commit” (154). She goes about the streets imagining that, for example, cars have been bought with the money made by “selling bread adulterated with marble dust” (154). She attributes these menacing, world-historical terms to people in the neighborhood, including Alfredo Peluso the Communist, the Solaras’ Camorrist grandfather, and Don Achille and the black market. Even Lila’s and Elena’s families have been accomplices to these crimes.

Elena has conflicting feelings about starting high school. On the one hand, she is sad to not be spending time with Lila; on the other hand, she hopes to detach herself from “that sum of misdeeds and compliances and cowardly acts of the people we knew and […] carried […] in our blood”(155). 

When Elena begins high school, she is in a room with forty-two students, and the only neighborhood faces are Gino’s and Alfonso’s. She spots Nino amongst the older students, but he does not appear to have recognized her. Lila, demanding as ever, asks Elena what she has learned at school each day. More concerned with impressing Lila than her teachers, Elena soon excels in Greek. She still feels that Lila “seemed ahead of me in everything, as if she were going to a secret school” (160).

Meanwhile, Elena determines to find a boyfriend before Lila announces that she is going out with one of her many admirers. Lila, however, is more concerned with making the perfect pair of shoes. So when Gino again asks Elena if she wants to be his girlfriend, she says yes, considering him “better than nothing” (159).

Elena feels confident in her learnings and Lila, a little sadly, comments: “You’re really doing well, it’s the satisfaction you get from school, it’s love” (165). 

This chapter takes place as the New Year’s Eve festivities mentioned in Chapter 1 of are approaching. There is a stir in the neighborhood. Rino feels a sense of rivalry with the Solara brothers, especially Marcello, who has been hanging around the shoe shop hoping to engage Lila in conversation. Rino determines to set off more fireworks than either one of the brothers. Lila is skeptical of his plan, noticing that her beloved brother has big dreams but “lacked concreteness, he didn’t know how to confront difficulties with his feet on the ground” (166). When Lila and Elena are sent to the Carraccis’ grocery to buy ingredients for dinner, the elegant Stefano invites them and their families over to his house for New Year’s Eve, promising that he will provide all the fireworks they could wish for.

The girls leave the shop giddy with laughter, wondering whether Stefano is interested in one of them or whether he merely wants to regain the respect of the neighborhood now that enough time since Don Achille’s death has passed. The families are happy to accept the invitation, and even the Pelusos agree to go to the “old hated home of Don Achille, to celebrate the new year together” (172). 

At the Carraccis’, Stefano makes a great impression on Elena, but the men are more interested in their fireworks than the girls. The Solaras are spotted across the road and Elena feels that the whole neighborhood is “in the grip of a desire for chaos,” as a frenzied competition between the Solaras and Carraccis ensues (175). It is here that Lila experiences the “dissolving margins” episode described in Chapter 1 (89). Lila struggles to maintain control but appears calm from the outside. Her brother, Rino, especially repulses her. The night ends dramatically when, having run out of fireworks, the Solaras began “shooting [guns] at us” (178).