My Brilliant Friend - by Elena Ferrante: A novel ranked #1 on the NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.
Alfred Sankara
Hook
Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo met in first grade and developed a lifelong friendship by competing for the best student in school, teaming up to stand up to bullies, engaging in daring adventures, and complementing one’s cautiousness with the other’s temerity and determination to take on life challenges in Naples, Italy.
Book Summary
A lifelong friendship since early childhood
Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo’s friendship started in Naples, Italy since first grade. They forged their friendship mingling and walking to and from school together. Competition was omnipresent in their school community. Students competed in the classroom to show who was the smartest. Their teacher Maestra Oliviero competed against the other teachers by making students compete on different subjects. The students’ behaviors throughout the competition were always influenced by the alliances and rivalries stemming from their community’s social dynamic. One student could engage in a fierce competition against another and at the same time remain lenient when facing another contender.
Quite frequently, Lila and Elena had to stand their ground against boys attempting to bully them. When attacked by those bullies throwing rocks at them, they teamed up to defend themselves. Elena picked the best rocks for Lila to charge back at the bullies. They grew up in a community gravid with poverty, disease, violence, and never-ending drama. Lila had such a character that had always influenced Elena. Elena approached life with a lack of conviction, always cautious and unclear about what to do next, while Lila was the absolute characteristic of determination, most often knowing clearly how to act, and that mix of cautiousness and determination made their friendship stick.
They engaged in incredible adventures
Lila and Elena engaged in daring adventures throughout their childhood that forged their lifelong friendship. One day, they dropped, through the grate, each other’s dolls into their neighborhood cellar, then had to get into the cellar to retrieve them. While searching for their dolls in that tenebrous cellar, they stepped onto all sorts of imaginary or genuine gross things that will make your hair stand up and send chills down your spine. This event, which remained stamped in Elena’s memory taught her a skill which she had retained forever: to hold back one’s despair in the face of any predicament.
Then, Lila always courageous and daring led Elena into the haunted house of Don Achille, a man depicted by the community as an ogre, to frontally accuse him of stealing their dolls. To their astonishment, the Don Achille which their parents ostracized as an evil and wicked man and forbade them to approach, gave them money to buy new dolls but he reminded them that it was his gift to them. The pair buried the money for a while and used it later to purchase books so they could read and in turn learn how to write books and become rich.
In light of this, Elena concluded that every disobedient act contains breathtaking opportunities. While going up the stairs to face the redoubtable Don Achille, they were both very terrified. Elena was trailing so behind that at some point Lila dompted her own fear, stopped, went back to her, grabbed her hand, and held it firmly to lead her forward. That act of grabbing her hand amid their common deep fear locked their lives together forever.
On another adventure, they skipped school to take a long walk to the sea to taste freedom. They walked past bucolic communities and came across weird country people. One man emerged from a tumbledown, but had nothing to show off except his mere crotches. After several miles of walk over many hours, their long walk did not lead them to the sea. Finally, exhausted and famished, the truant pupils trekked back home under the rain to face their parents’ ire.
Adolescence marked by the Naples community dynamics
Elena advanced to middle school whereas Lila went to a vocational school, while working part-time at her parents’ shoe repair shop. The pair continued to intermingle, studying sometimes together, going to mass, and exploring love by sharing stories about who had a crush on them. At some point, Lila quit her vocational school to share her time between housekeeping and helping her father Fernando and brother Rino at the Cerullo’s shoe repair shop. Lila and Rino wanted to start a business of shoemaking, but their father was always opposed to that idea, arguing that they should focus on repairing shoes rather than venturing into shoe manufacturing, which was only reserved for big companies capable of providing the high capital investment required upfront. Secretly, Lila designed a shoe and worked with her brother to make the shoe, which they named Cerullos.
Elena continued high school, where she studiously studied Latin, Greek, philosophy, and religion. The two girls continued to nurture their friendship sometimes reading books together, discussing love, learning to dance, attending parties and wandering around the city. The Solaras, a well-to-do family, who owned a bar in their community, amassed a fortune by selling alcohol and pastries. Their boys Marcello and Michele Solara drove an 1100 model car, which made Rino and his friend Pasquale jealous and caused rivalries, rancor, and hatred among the youth.
During a summer break, Elena was sent to the region of Ischia, in the Island of Burano, to bask in the sunlight of the Maronti Beach while staying in Nella Incardo’s house, a cousin of their teacher Maestra Oliviero. Nella rent part of her house to families vacationing on the island. Elena enjoyed her time on the beach swimming and reading, while helping Nella with cleaning the house and cooking for her guests. While in Burano, the Sarratores, a family from their Naples community, came to visit. Elena spent time with their daughter Marisa and had a crush on their son Nino, who was also her high school classmate. While in Burano, Elena wrote multiple letters to Lila, but she never responded and she got so desperate to read her that she was on the brink of giving up on her. Surprisingly, she was relieved to receive a letter from Lila on her birthday and reconnected with her dear friend.
After several weeks, a well-read Elena returned to Naples where she reunited with her family and friend Lila, who while she was gone, was forced to engage into a relationship with Marcello Solara. Marcello had been coming to the Cerullo’s house every evening for supper. He showered them with generous gifts and goodies and even brought a TV. The TV became the subject of interest to the entire community, which gathered at Lila’s house to watch TV every evening. Rino hated Marcello, but their parents, enjoying all the bounty they were getting from Marcello, silenced Rino and pressured Lila to accept Marcello’s courtship.
Love relationships with twists, a marriage drama, and how they held on to each other
Thereafter, Stephano, from the Carracci family, owners of the community grocery store bought a new car and engaged in wooing Lila and she liked him. One evening, Lila frontally asked Marcello to stop seeing her because she was in love with Stephano and asked Marcello to take away his TV. Marcello got so angry that he beat his fist against a wall to the point of bleeding.
On one hand, Lila went on to engage with Stephano, who partnered with Fernando, Lila’s father and her brother Rino to expand their shoe store and funded the manufacturing of the Cerullos, the shoes designed by his lover Lila. Elena on the other hand, continued to do well in school and flirted with a boy named Alfonso. Although she was doing well in school, Elena found her life dull in comparison to Lila’s who had become a moneyed and free spending fashion queen, changing expensive purses on a whim and going to the hairdresser whenever she pleased.
To their former teacher Maestra Oliviero, Lila lost her beauty of mind, replaced by her beauty of body, which is fleeting. Elena dated Alfonso, but she did not really love him. She rather continued to love Nino Sarratore, but there was another twist, because Donato Sarratore, Nino’s father secretly declared his love to Elena. Lila and Elena remained accomplices and partners to the point that they even wrote together a newspaper article, which was never published, leaving Elena disappointed.
Stephano and Lila got engaged, made plans to get married and the wedding preparation prompted tremendous drama. Picking the wedding dress was a subject of contention between Lila and her in-laws. Elena, then donnish, had to rely on her bookish wit to strike a compromise between them. Then, another crisis came when Stephano picked the Solara father to be the speaker at the wedding. Lila was so disappointed that she abandoned the marriage plan and locked herself in a room for so long that her parents and Elena had to work out another compromise. In the end, Lila gave up her opposition to the Solara father’s attendance, but in return she requested that Marcello Solara, her former boyfriend, was not invited to the wedding, to which Stephano agreed. The day of the wedding was another testimony of how deep the intimacy of the relationship between Lila and Elena was. Lila asked her to help her bathe and dress for the wedding.
The wedding ceremony itself stirred the community so profoundly. Some people could not afford the wedding clothes and had to get into debt to purchase a suit or a dress. Some managed to get something to wear, but could not get a car ride to join the procession. Elena came to the wedding with Alfonso, to find herself torn between him and her mother who didn’t want her daughter to date a mere mechanic. Her mother did not allow her to sit with Alfonso, who got mad at Elena and turned his back on her. To Lila’s surprise, Marcello Solara showed up at the wedding ceremony. She was so dumbstruck with Stefano’s broken promise that she turned red with anger and resentment.
Lila vanished from life prompting Elena to engage in introspection
Throughout the course of their friendship, Lila experienced an intriguing event, which she coined as dissolving margins. That striking experience may have set a precedent for her to confide to Elena that she will disappear someday from the surface of the earth. During that experience, she noticed that the outlines of people and things suddenly dissolved or disappeared. She was sweating and was shaken by nausea and everyone around her was shouting loudly and moving too quickly. While she felt the horror of the cries emerging from the people’s throat, she had a sense of repulsion of the poorly structured bodies of people around her and the human species in general.
Later on, the two friends definitively settled in life. After marriage they had children, and life went on. One day, Lila’s son named Rino called Elena to enquire about his mother and Elena told him that she was not with her and asked him to look around and tell if there was any sign that Lila had ever lived. Rino looked, but could not find any. Everything, which showed that Lila had ever lived on earth was erased: clothes, personal items, documents, pictures, everything disappeared from the surface of the earth as if Lila had never existed.
Reflection & Insights
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante; a novel ranked #1 on the NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century is centered on the story of a lifelong friendship, which brings into light the compromises and sacrifices that make friendship last for long.
Celebration of lifelong friendship
My Brilliant Friend celebrates the value of true friendship. Elena and Lila’s relationship is the epitome of a sort of symbiosis: two different individuals engaged in a mutually beneficial relationship. On one hand, we had the fearless, determined, and daring Lila, while on the other hand was a more careful and cautious if not hesitant Elena. This mix of impudence tamed by cautiousness allowed their friendship to thrive by weathering life’s many storms.
Lila’s determination and temerity allowed them to stand up to bullies and engage in daring adventures such as going to Don Achille, the community pariah’s apartment or attempting the long walk to the sea, or rather to paraphrase Nelson Mandela a long walk to freedom. Elena’s cautiousness and compromise also helped them overcome major crises such as when Lila abandoned her wedding plan in opposition to the attendance of the Solaras at the wedding, and the drama with Lila’s in-laws over picking the wedding dress.
Although they may seem to be in competition, they relied on each other’s mutual support and validation to thrive. They were mutually in thrall to each other. Their friendship survived thanks to the mix of the multifaceted elements of their characters to plot and fight together against life’s challenges.
Temperance and self-control
Lila and Elena’s friendship is also the absolute testimony of temperance and self-control. Throughout their story, they disappointed and offended each other. For example, Lila ignored the many letters which Elena wrote to her and she only responded once on Elena’s birthday. Elena was desperate, but as she learned while walking through the stairs to face the “ogre” Don Achille, she held her despair and did not hold any grudge. Instead, she was delighted to read Lila on her birthday. Occasionally, the pair traded each other mean words, which hurt, but they have always found a way to redeem themselves and make amend. Their story teaches us the lesson that temperance, selfless love, and a dose of forgiveness are the strings that weave the fabric of a lifelong friendship.
Determination in life and courage
Lila’s determination and courage teach us that one needs determination and courage to achieve life’s goals. She did not shy away from standing up to bullies. When she wanted to walk to the sea to enjoy freedom, they skipped school to go. When it was time to break up with Marcello, she did it without blinking or any hint of regret. Temerity and determination are key character traits that contribute to success in life, but they may come with some cost. Let’s remember that Lila survived a defenestration and recovered with a broken arm when she stood up to her father in defense of her brother Rino’s cause.
Similar to Lila and Elena, I personally have a lifelong friend. Fredo and I met for the first time in elementary school, then we went to different middle schools, embraced different careers but we have remained friends to this present moment. During our childhood, we played together, relied on each other’s strengths and weaknesses, fear and conviction to thrive. We plotted together to break rules set by our parents, sometimes we got through without retribution, but in some other cases, we paid a hefty price for our disobedience.
When it came to love, we sometimes dated girls we were never interested in. We have always supported each other in the face of trials and tribulations. In many occasions, we disappointed and offended each other, but as illustrated in this book, we have always forgiven each other. Despite having embraced different careers, got busy though life challenges and living in different continents, we have remained friends for life. Whenever possible, we always meet to continue to nurse our friendship. This book confirms that temperance, forgiveness, and love remain the bedrock of a lifelong friendship.
What is your lifelong friendship story? How do you thrive through your relationship amid trials and tribulation?
Character Growth Takeaways
Wisdom: [Scattered wisdom from the book to ponder over]
Every disobedient act contained breathtaking opportunities
The adult vs the children’s way:
Adults, waiting for tomorrow, move in a present behind which is yesterday or the day before or at most last week: they don’t want to think about the rest.
Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this is the night.
Lila convinced Elena that one achieves security in love only by subjecting the wooer to hard tests.
When there is no love, not only the life of the people becomes sterile but the life of cities.
In a city without love, people are deprived of happiness.
The beauty of mind that Cerullo had from childhood didn’t find an outlet, it has all ended up in her face, in her breasts, in her thighs, in her ass, places where it soon fades and it will be as if she had never had it.
Good and evil are mixed together and reinforce each other in turn.
Temperance: [Lesson about restraint, balance, humility]
Elena persevered in going to school and striving to write, despite the dullness and lack of apparent imminent reward. Thanks to her perseverance, this book is now ranked #1 on the NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.
Caught in conflict between Lila and her in-laws, Lila had to walk on a tightrope to strike a compromise:
I chose one of the styles at random, truly at random, careful not to pick one of those that Lila favored, and went on to demonstrate that it incorporated the qualities of the styles favored by the two women, and the qualities of the ones favored by my friend.
We entertained a long-standing friendship being accomplices, plotting against the rest of the world, one supporting other through life predicaments, knowing how to redeem themselves when they offend, hurt, or disappoint each other is a proof of temperance. Entertaining a friendship is a true exercise of temperance
Courage: [Lesson about strength, risk, or standing up]
Don Achille was perceived as the ogre of the community. Children were strictly forbidden to venture near him. Lila and Elena climbed up the stairs to Don Archille’s apartment to frontally accuse him of stealing their dolls, which he hid in some black bag.
“We climbed slowly toward the greatest of our terrors of that time, we went to expose ourselves to fear and interrogate it.”
This confrontation with the ogre of the community was an absolute feat of audacity and mettle.
Lila took Marcello outside of their house to look into his eyes and without blinking and hesitation let him know that their relationship was over and asked Marcello to stop seeing her.
I always felt slightly detached from my own actions. Lila on the other hand, had, from a young age, the characteristic of determination, she would do anything without hesitation.
Disappearing by effacing herself from the face of the earth
Justice: [Lesson about fairness, integrity, or responsibility]
The human condition was so obviously exposed to the blind fury of chance that to trust in a God, a Jesus, the Holy Spirit – this last a completely superfluous entity, it was there only to make up a trinity, notoriously nobler than the mere binomial father-son was the same things as collecting trading cards while the city burns in the fires of hell.
Is Elena trying to do justice for humans?
Memorable Quotes & Phrases
Quotes from the Book:
Every prohibition lost substance in her presence. She knew how to go beyond the limit without ever truly suffering the consequences.
I feel no nostalgia for our childhood: it was full of violence. Every sort of thing happened, at home and outside, every day, but I don’t recall having ever thought that the life we had there was particularly bad. Life was like that, that’s all, we grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before they made it difficult for us.
There are no gestures, words, or sighs that do not contain the sum of all the crimes that human beings have committed and commit.
They displayed kindness and politeness toward everyone, as if they were John and Jacqueline Kennedy visiting a neighborhood of indigents.
Whatever she put on, her beauty enhanced the dress, the dress enhanced her beauty.
If God is present everywhere, what need does he have to disseminate himself by way of the Holy Spirit?
But to turn to her meant that to continue to recognize her authority, when in fact I, by now, knew more than she did.
They had a fight giving each other a more or less equal beating.
Those moments are stamped into my memory.
The daughter of the murderer was in love with the son of the victim.
An energy that dazed them like the swelling sound of beauty arriving.
I was pleased with my role as confidante with generous advice, as accomplice in weaving plots.
We were girls, even if we imagined ourselves wickedly daring.
Phrases/Expressions to Remember:
Masterpieces of sturdy lightness, of dissonant harmony.
Mixture of pride and suffering
Fear-rancor-hatred-meekness
Vocabulary Builder
From Italian
o Stradone: Avenue, wide road, often a tree-lined one
o Antipasto: (in Italian cooking) an appetizer typically consisting of olives, anchovies, cheeses, and meats.
Hopscotch: skip from place to place; move erratically (from a children’s game in which each child by turn hops into and over squares marked on the ground to retrieve a marker)
Who Should Read This?
Anybody who is eager to explore the subtleties of friendship in order to grow relationships with friends.
Anyone wishing to undertake a life initiative, but is held by doubts and a lack of confidence and wanting to discover life adventure stories, which could inspire them to act, to just do it.