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
Lenù returns to school after Christmas break. Classes are hard, and many of her classmates drop out. Gino and Alfonso struggle to keep up, and when Gino laughs at Alfonso for crying out of frustration during class, Lenù breaks up with him. When Lenù tells Lila about the breakup, Lila confesses she’s received two declarations of her own: one from Pasquale, who declared his love for her in the street and begged her to marry him, and one from Marcello Solara. Lila turned down Pasquale, thanking him for teaching her so much about Italian history—the good and the bad—but insisting she only loved him like a brother. Lila responded to Marcello’s declaration (in which he told her he’d dreamed of asking her to marry him and rejoicing as she accepted) by retorting that only in a dream would she ever consent to marry him.
As Lenù confesses the loss of a partnership to Lila, Lila brags about the offers she’s received. She has turned down both Pasquale and Marcello—for very different reasons—and seems to feel, in the depths of her misery about the state of the neighborhood, that there is no point in having a relationship anyway.
Themes
Lenù is impressed by Lila’s impassioned refusal of the cruel Marcello—but she also worries for her friend and warns her not to tell anyone that she treated such a powerful man so badly. Nevertheless, Lila begins telling every girl in the neighborhood about rejecting Marcello in great detail. Lenù warns Lila she’s made trouble for herself, but Lila insists she’s going to be fine.
Lila is playing with fire—not only has she humiliated Marcello in rejecting him, but also has she begun flaunting his embarrassment all over town. In a world dominated by retributive violence, Lila is tempting fate—but she forgets that this quality is exactly what Marcello likes about her.
Themes
