My Brilliant Friend: Childhood: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Elena writes that she feels no nostalgia for her childhood, which was “full of violence” each and every day—violence which she, Lila, and everyone in their neighborhood simply took for granted. The men, she says, were violent with one another, but the women fought even more often than their husbands. As a girl, Elena recalls, she imagined “tiny, almost invisible animals” pouring from ponds and sewers each night and infesting the bodies of the women in the neighborhood, making them all “angry as starving dogs.”

When Lila and Lenù are still young, Lila’s mother, Nunzia’s, relative Melina Cappuccio is suddenly widowed. Donato Sarratore, a railroad worker who lives in the apartment above Melina’s (in the same building as Lenù and her family) often helps the poor woman with her six children. Melina falls in love with the generous and helpful Donato and seeks to “do battle against [his wife] Lidia” and steal Donato from her. Soon enough, an all-out “war” breaks out between the two women as they sabotage each other by ruining each other’s laundry, trading insults in the street, and even fighting in the stairwell of their apartment building. Lenù soon grows frightened of the women’s rage.

Though Lenù sides with Lidia, the mother of her crush Nino Sarratore, Lila sides with her relative Melina. Lenù attributes Lila’s fealty to Melina not just to their status as distant relatives, but to the “mean[ness] in [Lila’s] heart.” One afternoon, walking home from school with Nino’s younger sister Marisa Sarratore, Lila and Lenù notice Melina coming down the street. Marisa taunts Melina, calling her “whore,” and Lila smacks Marisa to the ground. Lenù runs to Marisa’s side. When she looks up, she sees that Lila is across the street, walking determinedly in the path of passing trucks as she goes to Melina’s aid.