Previous
Adolescence: Chapter 10
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Brilliant Friend, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Female Friendship
Masculine vs. Feminine Violence
Women’s Work
Poverty, Social Climbing, and Sacrifice
The Uses of Community
Love, Sex, and Strategy
Summary
Analysis
The next day, Lenù goes to meet up with Pasquale against her parents’ wishes. She tells him about the drama with Melina and Donato, embellishing their “tragic love” and Donato’s poetic gifts. Lenù soon realizes that Pasquale is not very invested in the conversation. He begins to ask her questions about Lila, which she is all too happy to answer. As they arrive at the shop and begin talking and joking with Rino and Lila about the many books Lila has won, Lenù notices that Pasquale is stealing many furtive but intense looks at Lila. When Rino and Pasquale step outside to talk, Lenù tries to figure out what has changed in her friend to make her attractive to Pasquale—Lila hasn’t gotten her period or grown breasts, yet something is different.
Lenù was bolstered by Pasquale’s attention the other day—now, though, as she sees him and Lila in the same room together, she realizes that Pasquale has simply been using her to get closer to Lila, who is the true object of his affection. This inspires a new kind of competitiveness in Lenù: she realizes that just as Pasquale has used her, there is room for her and Lila to use male attention as a measure of a new kind of success.
Themes
Lila takes Lenù to the back and pulls Donato’s book, Attempts at Serenity, from a shelf. Lila reveals that Antonio brought it over to get it out of his mother’s hands. Lila says that Donato is a scoundrel for sending the book—now, she says, Melina expects him to come back to the neighborhood, and when he doesn’t, she’ll just continue suffering. Lenù is amazed by Lila’s ability to “intensif[y] reality as she reduce[s] it to words.” Lenù hopes that she herself has the same ability. She feels completely in awe of Lila, and she tries not to be too distracted by the realization that it’s Lila, not herself, in whom Pasquale is interested.
As Lenù, rapt, listens to Lila’s take on the situation between Melina and Donato, she finds herself feeling intensely jealous of her friend on several levels. In one sense, Lila and Lenù are closer than they’ve ever been—in another, there are deeper divisions opening up between them than they’ve ever had to reckon with.
Themes
