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 is disturbed by Lila’s letter. She struggles to write back—she feels her language is insufficient and that she cannot capture her feelings about the Sarratores or about her worry for Lila. Nella and the Sarratores try to rouse Lenù’s spirits, but she tells them that her friend is in trouble and that she may be returning home the next day. When everyone fusses over Lenù leaving and begs her to stay, she feels her birthday becomes “even happier.”
Lenù is sad for her friend—but she also feels threatened by the idea that Lila, in spite of a lack of formal education, is a better writer and thinker than she is. Being the center of attention on Ischia among the Sarratores makes Lenù feel better about herself.
Themes
That night, as Lenù gets into her bed in the kitchen, she stares at the pots on the wall and thinks of Lila. She rereads her friend’s letter and clutches Nino’s bookmark. After a while, she hears footsteps. Donato enters the kitchen. Lenù pulls up the covers and pretends to sleep. Donato speaks: he says he knows Lenù is awake, and he entreats her to stay. Lenù insists she must return home to her friend who needs her, but Donato replies that he is the one who needs Lenù. He approaches her bed and begins kissing her. Lenù, “immobilized,” lies still as Donato caresses her breasts and moves his fingers against her underwear. Lenù is horrified by Donato’s behavior—and by her own pleasure. Donato tells Lenù he loves her and asks her to take a walk on the beach with him the next day before bidding her goodnight and leaving the kitchen.
Nino was right about his father all along—Donato is a predatory philanderer with no allegiance to his wife and family. Even though Donato’s advances are nonconsensual, there is a part of her that feels a repulsive kind of pleasure. In a world where male attention of any kind represents so many conflicting things, it makes sense that Lenù has a response to Donato’s lechery that confuses even her.
Themes
Lenù lies in bed, distressed over her failure to heed Nino’s warnings about his father. Full of disgust for both Donato and herself, Lenù lies awake all night. At first light, she collects her things, makes her bed, writes a note of thanks to Nella, and leaves for the ferry. As the boat pulls away, she begins thinking of how she will tell Lila about what’s happened. From the future, Elena writes that she never told Lila about the incident—this is the first time she has ever put what happened between her and Donato into words.
As Elena, narrating from the future, steps in to admit that she has never shared the story of Donato’s abuse with anyone, it becomes clear that she harbors great shame about what’s happened to her—and that in light of what is going to happen when she returns to the neighborhood, she won’t want to share that shame even with her closest friend.
Themes
