In a brief prologue, Elena Greco—a woman in her sixties living in Turin, Italy—receives a call from her friend Lila’s son back in Naples. Rafaella “Lila” Cerullo, Elena’s friend since childhood, has gone missing. Elena suggests that Rafaella—whom she has always called Lila—doesn’t want to be found and coldly tells her son to stop looking for her. Angry with Lila for taking things “too far,” she sits down at her computer to write their story. Looking back on her childhood in 1950s Naples, Elena—then known as Lenù—recalls life in a neighborhood run by loan sharks and Camorrists (gangsters) and dominated by widespread violence perpetrated by both men and women.
Elena begins her story when she and Lila are in elementary school. As Elena describes their primary school years, she interweaves stories of day-to-day life with the tale of her and Lila’s journey one fateful afternoon up to the apartment of Don Achille, a mysterious and feared loan shark, to demand the return of a pair of dolls they believe he stole from them. Lenù and Lila bond over the years as they compete fiercely in school—Lila is preternaturally gifted and has taught herself to read and write by the age of seven. Lenù, desperate to keep up with Lila, vows to do whatever Lila does in every aspect of her life, no matter the danger or the cost. Together, the girls fend off the violence of their male classmates, watch the women of their neighborhood assault one another over their husbands’ and lovers’ infidelities, and study hard—but it becomes clear that despite their shared love of books and their desire to get rich by writing a novel together, Lila and Lenù are on very different paths.
When it is time to take the admissions test for middle school, Lenù, encouraged by her teacher Maestra Oliviero, begins attending study sessions in preparation. Lila’s parents, who know they cannot afford to continue sending her to school, prepare her to go to work alongside her brother Rino in their father, Fernando’s, cobbler shop. Shortly before the exam, Lila tries to get Lenù barred from taking the test by enticing her into playing hooky and taking a trip to the seaside—but halfway there, Lila changes her mind and drags Lenù back home. Then, on a rainy August day just before Lenù is due to start middle school, Don Achille is murdered. Lila and Lenù’s friend Carmela Peluso’s father, Alfredo, a disgruntled carpenter who lost everything gambling in bars run by Don Achille and the powerful Silvio Solara, is arrested for the crime. The stoic Lila comforts the distraught Carmela by assuring her that even if Alfredo did commit the murder, he did the right thing in taking out the “ogre of fairy tales.”
As young women, Lila and Lenù continue to seek ways of escaping the bleak fates for which they feel they are destined. Lenù struggles in school, leading her mother and father to argue about whether or not she should drop out. Lila, meanwhile, begins work in her father’s shoe shop. She extols her occupation to Lenù at every chance she gets, insisting that her work is worthier than studying. Soon, however, Lila asks Lenù if she can join her as she studies for her end-of-year test—it is clear that the books Lila borrows from the library are not enough to keep her mind occupied. But after several weeks of studying, Lila tells Lenù that she wants to stop. She and Rino have an important secret project to work on: a line of fine shoes for men and women that will hopefully sell well in town, allowing Fernando to open a factory and make more money. As Lila and Lenù each become more aware of the stronghold the Solara family has over their neighborhood—and the ways in which Marcello and Michele Solara, a pair of brothers several years the girls’ senior, pick on and harass the poor girls of the neighborhood—they realize that the only way to protect themselves is by securing money of their own.
Lenù passes middle school with flying colors. She is upset, however, when Lila doesn’t seem proud of her. Her confidence suffers further hits when Lila beats Lenù out for an award for top borrowers from the local library and when Pasquale, Carmela’s older brother, uses Lenù to flirt with Lila. Lenù cannot deny that Lila has changed lately, becoming lovelier in indefinable ways. Meanwhile, when Lenù tells Lila that she is going to study Greek at high school in the fall, Lila responds by asking “What is high school?” One day, while Lila and Lenù stroll through the neighborhood, Marcello and Michele Solara pull up in their Fiat 1100 and ask the girls to go for a drive with them. Lila and Lenù refuse, but the boys continue pestering them. When Marcello grabs Lenù’s arm from the car, snapping her mother’s bracelet, he gets out to help her pick it up—Lila, pulling a knife from her pocket, holds the blade against Marcello’s throat and threatens to kill him if he touches Lenù again.
As the weeks go by and the summer fills up with local dance parties at the homes of Lila and Lenù’s friends and classmates, it becomes clear to Lenù just how many of their male friends have fallen in love with Lila. At a dance at the house of Gigliola Spagnuolo, a classmate of Lenù’s whose father works as the pastry maker at the Solaras’ bar, Lila dances with boy after boy, lost in the music. Marcello and Michele show up—Marcello engages the hedonistic Lila in a dance while Michele has Pasquale, Antonio Cappuccio, and several other of Lila’s male friends kicked out of the party. Lila and Lenù follow their friends downstairs, where Pasquale rails against the loan sharks and Camorrists who run the neighborhood. After this, Lila becomes obsessed with learning about the history of Italy and starts taking long walks with Pasquale during which he explains communism, fascism, and many other political concepts to her. Lenù, meanwhile, realizes that her childhood crush, Nino Sarratore, is among her new high school classmates. Previously, Nino’s family was forced to leave the neighborhood after Nino’s poet father, Donato, was accused of having an affair with Antonio’s mentally unstable mother, Melina.
Over the Christmas break, Rino becomes obsessed with amassing fireworks for a New Year’s Eve display that will rival the Solaras’ yearly blowout. Lila and Lenù accept an invitation to celebrate New Year’s with Stefano Carracci and his family—the son of Don Achille, now a grocer, is determined to mend fences with his neighbors in the wake of his father’s death. At the celebration, Rino and his friends set off a huge display of fireworks—but when their display threatens to outlast the Solaras’, the Solaras begin shooting bullets across the spaces between their buildings’ terraces, which terrifies Lenù, Lila, Rino, and their friends.
After this incident, Lila and Rino’s relationship suffers further when Rino attempts to show their father they shoes they designed, only for Fernando to lash out in anger at both of them and condemn them for making shoes behind his back. Meanwhile, Lenù returns to school and continues to excel, earning the admiration of many of her teachers—even though Nino continues to ignore her. Marcello Solara begins pursuing Lila and starts visiting the Cerullo home for dinner each night. Rino and Fernando welcome him warmly, but Lila hates him as passionately as ever. Rino puts the shoes in the shop window, hoping they’ll sell. Marcello considers buying them but backs down at the last minute—though he asks for Lila’s hand in marriage.
At Maestra Oliviero’s suggestion, Lenù heads to stay with Oliviero’s cousin Nella Incardo at a small boarding house Nella runs on the island of Ischia. Here, Lenù enjoys several weeks of sun and relaxation—but she is perturbed when she doesn’t receive an answer to the many letters she sends to Lila, and her vacation takes a strange turn with the Sarratore family shows up to stay at Nella’s. Lenù pines for Nino—but when she realizes that she has attracted the attentions of Nino’s lecherous father, Donato, she flees the island in terror and repulsion. Back in the neighborhood, Lenù realizes that Lila is hatching a plan to reject Marcello and marry Stefano. Stefano purchases the shoes and announces his intention to marry Lila. Lila herself tells Marcello the news, warning him that if he tries to harm Stefano or anyone in her family out of vengeance, she will kill him. Stefano pours money into Fernando’s shop, insisting he hire more workers and begin manufacturing Lila’s designs for Cerullo shoes. Fernando reluctantly agrees to do so.
Lenù begins seeing Antonio, motivated by the desire to have an older paramour just like Lila. Meanwhile, Marcello begins spreading cruel rumors about Lila, and Pasquale, Enzo, and Antonio attack the Solaras and destroy their car. Lenù helps Lila with preparations for her wedding, fending off the cruelty Lila faces from her future mother- and sister-in-law, Maria and Pinuccia. Lenù becomes more anxious as Lila’s wedding day approaches—she fears losing her friend forever. While Stefano showers Lila in gifts and secures a fancy new apartment for them to live in after the marriage, Lenù tries to convince herself that school is her “wealth”—even as she gets into trouble with her religion teacher for making a scene in class. Nino offers Lenù the chance to publish a polemic against religion in a local political journal, and Lenù begs Lila for help finalizing the article, but Lila declares that reading Lenù’s writing and seeing how Lenù shines hurts her.
A few weeks before the wedding, Stefano and Lila get into a huge fight when Stefano, desperate to make sure that Cerullo shoes is able to make money in the neighborhood in the future, offers Silvio Solara an important role in their wedding ceremony as a show of good faith. Lila is furious, but Lenù reminds Lila that together, she and Stefano can begin to change the neighborhood for the better. Lila agrees to go through with the wedding on the condition that Marcello is not present for any part of it. Stefano agrees. On the day of the wedding, Lenù helps Lila get ready for the ceremony. She is full of fear, envy, and even repulsion as she considers that her friend will soon be a married woman. After the ceremony, at a boisterous reception at a nearby restaurant, Lenù ignores Antonio and tries to make conversation with Nino—she is devastated, however, when Nino casually tells her that the journal didn’t have “room” to run her article. As the party becomes more drunken and debauched, the adults present begin fighting. Lila’s relatives believe they have received poorer service and worse food and wine than Stefano’s. Lila is oblivious to the chaos all around her—until Marcello Solara enters, sits himself down at her and Stefano’s tables, and, upon crossing his legs, reveals that he is wearing the prototype of the Cerullo shoes for men—the pair Lila worked hard on for months, “ruining” her hands in the process of bringing them into being.
