My Brilliant Friend: Adolescence: Chapter 44 Summary & Analysis

Lila’s role as Stefano’s fiancée makes her the subject of envy and ire throughout the neighborhood. Stefano’s mother Maria and his sister Pinuccia especially begin to treat Lila with suspicion and dislike. They don’t like the amount of money Stefano spends on Lila, or the fact that Lila doesn’t work now—but when they ask her to come to work in the grocery store and she readily agrees to, they don’t like that answer either. Stefano begins buying Pinuccia presents too, and soon she and Lila are in competition for Stefano’s affection. The other neighborhood girls also begin competing with Lila by trying to dress up and act like ladies—but Carmela, Ada, and Gigliola’s attempts to catch up with Lila fail.

One night, Stefano tells Lila to invite her friends out to dinner. The dinner is held at a big restaurant—Lenù, Antonio, and Ada have never been to a restaurant and worry about how they’ll pay for the many dishes Stefano orders. They don’t enjoy the meal—and at the end, when Stefano pays for everything, they feel foolish. Antonio takes offense at being treated like a “pauper” while Lenù and Ada, intimidated by their newly-glamorous friend, feel Lila is “unsuited” to the simple ways they live, dress, and get around.

As Lila becomes more and more glamorous and develops an even more beautiful, voluptuous shape, Lenù begins to feel that the Lila she knew—the Lila who wrote The Blue Fairy and the beautiful letter to Lenù in Ischia, who loved books and languages so intensely—has disappeared. Lenù realizes that she and Lila are moving through two vastly different worlds. Lenù cannot stop thinking of the image of the exploded, deformed pot—she believes that Lila cannot be contained and will, sooner or later, “break everything again.”