Lila and Lenù’s friend Carmela Peluso’s father, Alfredo, a disgruntled carpenter who lost everything gambling in bars run by Don Achille and the powerful Silvio Solara, is arrested for the crime. Then, on a rainy August day just before Lenù is due to start middle school, Don Achille is murdered.

Shortly before the exam, Lila tries to get Lenù barred from taking the test by enticing her into playing hooky and taking a trip to the seaside-but halfway there, Lila changes her mind and drags Lenù back home. Lila’s parents, who know they cannot afford to continue sending her to school, prepare her to go to work alongside her brother Rino in their father, Fernando’s, cobbler shop. When it is time to take the admissions test for middle school, Lenù, encouraged by her teacher Maestra Oliviero, begins attending study sessions in preparation. Together, the girls fend off the violence of their male classmates, watch the women of their neighborhood assault one another over their husbands’ and lovers’ infidelities, and study hard-but it becomes clear that despite their shared love of books and their desire to get rich by writing a novel together, Lila and Lenù are on very different paths. Lenù, desperate to keep up with Lila, vows to do whatever Lila does in every aspect of her life, no matter the danger or the cost.

Lenù and Lila bond over the years as they compete fiercely in school-Lila is preternaturally gifted and has taught herself to read and write by the age of seven.

As Elena describes their primary school years, she interweaves stories of day-to-day life with the tale of her and Lila’s journey one fateful afternoon up to the apartment of Don Achille, a mysterious and feared loan shark, to demand the return of a pair of dolls they believe he stole from them. Looking back on her childhood in 1950s Naples, Elena-then known as Lenù-recalls life in a neighborhood run by loan sharks and Camorrists (gangsters) and dominated by widespread violence perpetrated by both men and women.Įlena begins her story when she and Lila are in elementary school. Angry with Lila for taking things “too far,” she sits down at her computer to write their story. Elena suggests that Rafaella-whom she has always called Lila-doesn’t want to be found and coldly tells her son to stop looking for her. Rafaella “Lila” Cerullo, Elena’s friend since childhood, has gone missing. In a brief prologue, Elena Greco-a woman in her sixties living in Turin, Italy-receives a call from her friend Lila’s son back in Naples.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante