Nino Sarratore Character Analysis

Nino is Donato and Lidia Sarratore’s son and Marisa Sarratore’s brother. He is the aloof, unattainable object of Lenù’s affection from her elementary school days onward. From the time Lenù is small, she pines for Nino—yet when they are in primary school and Nino approaches Lenù one day to ask if they can get married when they grow up, Lenù panics and rejects him. When Nino and his family move out of the neighborhood after Donato and Melina Cappuccio’s affair becomes a public spectacle, Lenù fears that she’ll never see Nino again. Years later, she is surprised and delighted when she begins high school in Naples and realizes that the two of them are classmates once again. Nino, however, has grown skinny, shabby, and disaffected, while Lenù is too afraid of pursuing him to break through the walls between them. Nino and Lenù continue to orbit each other as the years go by—when Lenù goes to the island of Ischia for the summer and realizes that Nino and his family are staying at the same inn, she and Nino have their first real conversations and exchanging a brief but meaningful kiss. But Lenù’s feelings for Nino are complicated even further when Nino’s father gropes her and kisses her one evening; repulsed by Donato and yet full of love for Nino, Lenù flees the island and begins avoiding Nino at school. When Lenù gets in trouble with her religion teacher for speaking out against the church’s tenets, Nino urges Lenù to harness her discontent and contribute an article to a journal he writes for. Lenù is full of hope, believing that perhaps if Nino sees her as an intellectual equal, he might at last fall in love with her—but her hopes are dashed when Nino cruelly reports that the journal didn’t have “room” to publish Lenù’s essay. Lenù and Nino’s burgeoning relationship is complicated and tinged with resentment, competitiveness, and cruelty, foreshadowing the ways in which they will continue to seek to best one another throughout the remainder of the Neapolitan Novels.