The Story of a New Name

In the spring of 1966, Lila entrusts Elena, the first-person narrator, with a metal box of eight notebooks, which she can no longer keep at home for fear that her husband will read them. Though Lila ties the box with an excessive amount of string and makes Elena swear that she will never open it, Elena breaks her promise. In Lila’s notebooks, Elena reads “detailed accounts of the events of her life” and the neighborhood in which she and Lila grew up (15). The notebooks cover the events of My Brilliant Friend, the first book in Ferrante’s quartet, from Lila’s perspective. They describe Lila’s sadness, as a child, when Maestra Oliviero ignored her story, The Blue Fairy and when Elena abandoned her to go to middle school. They describe how proud she was when she made her first pair of shoes and became “a rich and elegant lady” on the arm of her fiancé, Stefano Carracci, who out of his love for her, helped expand the family shoemaking business (17). Finally, they culminate in Lila’s horror that her hated former suitor, Marcello Solara, turned up to her wedding, wearing the handmade shoes her husband “had said were so dear to him” (17).

Elena is “hypnotized” by the notebooks, both in terms of their content and their precise, engaging style (18); however, one day in November, when Elena can no longer stand feeling Lila “on me and in me,” she drops the box of notebooks into the river (18).

Picking up where My Brilliant Friend left off, this chapter begins at the moment when Marcello Solara, the man Lila loathes most in the world, storms into her wedding, wearing the shoes she labored over and then gave to her husband. As Elena watches Lila catch Stefano’s arm, she knows that her friend’s anger is such that, if she could, “she would have wrenched it from his body,” carrying it across the room like a bloody triumph and then used it to “crush Marcello’s face with a solid blow” (19). Elena catches Lila’s destructive impulse and entertains the fantasy that the two of them will “immediately shatter everything” and everyone in the neighborhood and then go and live far away together (19). However, Elena remains in her seat while Stefano chases Lila. Elena knows that, regardless of what Lila’s new husband does to earn forgiveness, the marriage is already over for Lila.

Elena is disappointed when Lila returns with Stefano in her traveling outfit and hands the wedding favors to all guests, apart from the Solaras and her brother, Rino. When the couple leaves for a honeymoon, Elena wonders if Lila has surrendered and is “bowing to the fact that some business arrangement or other between her husband and Marcello had been sealed by her girlish labours” (21). Elena cannot imagine ever loving a man enough to make him the most important person in the world, not even Nino Sarratore, whom she idealizes romantically and whom she considers far superior to her auto mechanic boyfriend, Antonio Cappuccio.

Antonio is jealous and indignant that he has gone into debt to buy a suit for the wedding to impress her, only to see her ignore him and hang on Nino Sarratore’s every word. The educational difference between him and Elena, pains Antonio. Forcefully grabbing her wrist, he insists that she must choose between him and Nino. She says she wants to stay with him, and Antonio decides to classify the hours Elena spent with Nino, “seducing and seduced,” as hallucinations (24). Antonio and Elena go off together.

Elena and Antonio begin to touch each other intimately in a deserted place by the canning factory where they often go. Elena feels “desire to find a violent satisfaction” (25). She imagines Lila is preparing for her wedding night and the loss of her virginity, and she doesn’t want to be left behind. She wants Antonio to penetrate her fully, but he enters her “just a little,” because he considers the conditions of pond-side sex degrading (27). As soon as Elena returns home, her mother hits her so violently that her glasses fly off. Elena announces that she will no longer continue her studies.

Depressed, Elena cuts school and walks through the streets of Naples. Although she feels guilty about Antonio, Elena obsesses over Nino, wishing to see and talk to him, all the while fearing that she cannot equal his “brilliance” (29). She imagines giving up school altogether and resigning herself to life in the neighborhood with Antonio.

When Lila returns from her honeymoon, she hosts a big lunch to celebrate the engagement of her brother, Rino, to Stefano’s sister, Pinuccia. When Elena catches up with Lila, she is wearing big sunglasses and “a scarf of blue voile that she had knotted in such a way that it covered her lips, too” (30). Lila says that she has been avoiding Elena because she cares about her and what she thinks.

Lila tells Elena about her honeymoon, an account that Elena, the narrator, embellishes with details she has gleaned from Lila’s notebooks. As soon as they leave the wedding and get into the car, Lila insults Stefano “with the most intolerable words and phrases” of their neighborhood (31). Stefano listens calmly and then explains that, to prevent the closure of the Cerullo’s shoe factory before it even opened, he had to enlist the help of the wealthy, influential Solaras. The biggest obstacle to Stefano’s plan had been Marcello Solara, who was still furious about Lila’s humiliating rejection. Marcello could be placated only by having for himself the shoes that Lila made for Stefano, so Rino handed them over.

Lila confronts Stefano about his role in the transaction and he says (“after a moment of embarrassment”) that he could not have refused Marcello’s request because doing so would have ruined the Cerullos, started a war in the neighborhood and caused him to lose all the money he had invested (31). This is an insufficient explanation for Lila, who begins to hit Stefano violently. He loses his composure and slaps her cheek so hard it turns purple. He says that Lila, as his wife, must obey him. If Lila repeats any of her insults he says she will “ruin that beautiful face of yours so that you can’t go outside” (34). 

Lila and Stefano reach Amalfi in the evening. As they explore the town, Stefano tries to be charming and sentimental. Lila begins to be physically repulsed by Stefano, there being “not the smallest detail, that once recalled, revealed to her any charm” (36). She contemplates stealing a knife from the restaurant so that she can kill him at the moment he tries to deflower her.

She does not go through with her plan, but feels frightened when they return to the hotel. Trying to delay the inevitable, Lila locks herself in the bathroom so long that Stefano threatens to break the door down. When she comes out, dressed in her nightgown, she tells Stefano repeatedly that she does not want him. Stefano quickly moves from being romantic to violent, forces her onto the bed, rips off her clothes, and slaps her when she writhes away from him. Lila feels that Stefano’s father and the feared figure from her childhood, Don Achille “was rising from the muck of the neighbourhood, feeding on the living matter of his son” (41). When “after some awkward attempts” Stefano tears at Lila’s flesh “with passionate brutality,” Lila is consumed with her hatred for her new husband (42).

Four days later, when the couple returns from their honeymoon, Stefano hosts a lunch for the Carraccis and the Cerullos. He enlists Fernando Cerullo, Lila’s father, and her brother, Rino, to explain why Marcello had to be given the handmade shoes. Rino refers to the incident when Antonio Cappuccio, Enzo Scanno, and Pasquale Peluso, three neighborhood boys and admirers of Lila, beat up the Solara brothers and wrecked their car. Marcello was convinced that Lila had sent the trio and would have killed them had it not been for the sacrifice of Lila’s shoes. Lila remains silent.

Meanwhile, Rino and Pinnucia’s engagement is announced. Lila notices that the ring her brother has given Pinnucia is similar to hers and she wonders where he got the money. She remains standing for most of the lunch, because “it hurt to sit” (44). No one, not even Nunzia, her mother, notices “her swollen, black right eye, the cut on her lower lip, the bruises on her arms” (44). 

Lila lies about her bruises, saying that she got them when she fell on the Amalfi rocks. The women, especially, do not believe her, but know this is the lie they must tell “when the men whom they loved beat them severely” (45). Besides, Lila, who is unpopular amongst the neighborhood women, is seen as being in need of a good thrashing. Elena, on the other hand, embraces Lila and feels “a tenuous pleasure” at the thought that Lila needs her (45). Lila invites Elena to come and study at her house. Elena cannot decide because she no longer wants her role as Lila’s pimply, geeky friend. Elena continues to skip school.

Elena contemplates Antonio’s plan for them: to marry and work at a gas station. Elena wonders if she should accept the simple life, but cannot help but remember the ambitions that derived from her schooling.

When she walks unintentionally to the neighborhood where her school is, she bumps into Stefano’s brother, Alfonso Carracci, who is a fellow student. He says that Professor Galiani has been asking about her and begs her to come back to school.

Elena turns over the idea in her mind and returns to school the next day with a note explaining that she had a fever. 

Back at school, Elena finds it difficult to catch up. She fuels Antonio’s jealousy when she claims she must spend time on homework; he imagines she may be seeing Nino instead. Elena is, in truth, distracted by Nino and gets low marks.

Alfonso entreats Elena to see Lila at her new apartment. Lila, who talks of her husband with “placid disdain” entreats Elena to come to the apartment and study (52).

Elena gets into the habit of going to Lila’s every day after school. Lila makes her snacks while she studies and she enjoys soaking in the luxurious bathtub. Antonio worries that what he can give Elena will never be good enough.

Lila seems “intimidated” (56) by Elena’s high school books, not realizing that she herself retains a prodigious capacity to learn and that her observations and insights still refresh Elena.

Lila is exceptionally lonely as a married woman. The only person she sees is her sister-in-law, Pinuccia. Lila opens some wedding photo albums and shows Elena a full-color home movie of the wedding. Elena spots herself in the film first—“awkward, nervous”—sitting beside Antonio in church and then “refined and beautiful” as she converses with Nino (59). Then there is the scene where the tall skinny Nino indifferently bumps against the muscly Solaras as he exits while they are entering. To Elena, it seems that this boy, who grew up in their neighborhood, “now appeared completely outside the scale of values at whose peak stood the Solaras” (60).

While Elena sees Nino as a superior, “ascetic prince” (61), Lila thinks he is arrogant. Elena says nothing, but is convinced that she will love Nino for as long as he lives.

Antonio is upset at the prospect of having to do his military service, both because he worries about his mother, the mentally fragile Melina, and because he worries Elena will leave him. He asks Elena to find out from Lila how Stefano got exempted from military service. Lila learns, from Pinuccia, that Stefano paid the people in the recruiting office and that the “‘Solaras took care of everything”’ (66). When Lila reports this information to Elena, Lila reveals her concern about this alliance between her husband and the Solaras, apparently established long before her engagement. 

Elena does not report a word of what Lila has told her to Antonio.

Meanwhile, life at school is difficult, given the decrepit state of the school buildings. Nino Sarratore has sent a typewritten letter demanding that the school return to its normal operating hours and asks Elena to review it. Elena meets Nino after school with the letter, but he crumples it in his hand, because the cause is now futile. He thanks Elena, kissing her on the cheek.

Then two terrible things happen. First, a beautiful girl, who looks about fifteen, meets Nino and they kiss. Next, Elena realizes Antonio has been there watching.

Antonio is terrified that if he goes into military service, Elena will leave him for Nino. His sister, Ada, who works at Stefano’s grocery, says that Antonio has been acting uncharacteristically angry with “fragile” nerves and that he is calm only when Elena is around (71).

That night at their customary meeting place at the ponds, Antonio shows Elena a card that suggests he has not received an exemption from military service. He is in absolute despair, filling his mouth with dirt from the ground.

The next day, Elena tells Lila that she intends to go to the Solara brothers to try and get Antonio an exemption. Lila says she will go with Elena, even if Stefano gets angry about it.

One Sunday, when Stefano sleeps until noon, Elena goes to the Solara’s bar with Lila, who is dressed up in a way that makes her resemble Ava Gardner in The Sun Also Rises. The Solaras greet Lila as Signora Carracci and Marcello grows pale and retreats when he sees her. He says that he has seen the photograph of Lila in her wedding dress in the dressmaker’s window display.

Lila brings the conversation around to Antonio, whom she paints as Elena’s fiancé and persuades the Solaras that it would be terrible for him to go into military service. Elena is struck by Lila’s “shrewd dose of impudence and assurance” (75). Marcello relents, saying that he will ask a friend to see if something can be done for Antonio.

Michele then tells Lila that, because her shoes are conspicuous in the wedding photograph, he wants it for the store in Piazza dei Martiri, where Cerullo shoes will be sold. Marcello then accompanies the girls to the door and says that he wants Lila to be clear that Rino and Stefano gave him the shoes as a demonstration that there was no bad feeling. Lila says that they are all like children and that she does not care about the transaction anymore. 

Lila and Elena go to the old courtyard and Elena calls Antonio. When she tells him what they have done for him, Antonio says in a strangled voice that he never asked her to talk to the Solaras and that her intervention was not necessary. He then abandons the girls. Elena vents to Lila.

Meanwhile, Lila asks her to come to her house. Stefano is there and becomes irritated that Lila’s photo is in the Piazza dei Martiri shop, which he thinks makes him look like an idiot. On the landing, Lila and Elena imitate the men who have been giving them trouble and there is a brief moment of laughter. But on her way out, Elena hears Stefano shouting odious curses, with the ogre-like voice of his father, Don Achille.

Antonio finds Elena returning from Lila’s and accuses her of humiliating him in front of the people he despises most in the world—the ones who took advantage of his sister and beat him when he tried to defend her. He says that he would rather die in the army than pander to Marcello Solara. Finally, he declares he is breaking up with Elena because she cares nothing about his feelings. He gives her one last kiss and leaves, claiming he never wants to see her again.

Elena is invited to see Stefano and he takes her on a drive. He vents about how Lila’s rebelliousness has made life a daily battle. With tears in his eyes, Stefano reveals how he must beat Lila in order to subdue her. He also believes that her malevolence kills all potential children or stops them from being conceived. He worries that there is talk about him not knowing how to be a man in the neighborhood. He wants Elena to ally herself with him, for the good of Lila.

At the dressmaker’s, he asserts his authority, saying that he is Lila’s husband and that her photograph ought to be taken down. The dressmaker reluctantly agrees, saying that amongst those curious about Lila’s photograph were some influential people—such as an opera singer, an Egyptian prince, and a journalist. The dressmaker’s talk softens Stefano, and he begins “to speak of Lila with the pride of someone possessing a rare object whose ownership confers great prestige” (88). In the car again, Stefano implores Elena to help Lila understand right from wrong. Despite his impatience with Lila, he goes around the neighborhood spreading the dressmaker’s story about how much people in high places admire his wife.

Elena’s grades drop drastically and she does not get a scholarship for the following year. She looks for Antonio, but he manages to avoid her. When she goes to Lila’s house, Lila does not confide in her.

One day, Pinuccia arrives at the house with Rino. They claim they want to see the view and are shut up in a room for a good half hour. When they return, the conversation turns to Lila’s photograph. When Elena says that Stefano will never permit Lila’s photograph to be displayed, Lila places a bet. She says that if Stefano changes his mind, Elena must never pass with anything but the best grades. If he does not, she, Lila, will enroll in a private school, start studying again, and pass her diploma with better grades than Elena. Elena resents this call to direct competition.

Pinuccia officiously wonders when Lila will make her an aunt, drawing attention to Lila’s failure fill her conjugal expectations. 

Elena reclaims her old summer job, which involves taking the stationer’s daughters to the beach. She goes to see Maestra Oliviero, the primary school teacher, who was the first to notice Elena’s and Lila’s talents, but a neighbor tells her that Maestra Oliviero is in hospital.

Meanwhile, Melina has disappeared. Elena tries to help Antonio find his mother, but he repulses her, stating that Elena is ‘“no woman”’ (96). They find Melina soaking in a pond to cool off. When she emerges from the pond, Elena can see Lila watching the disturbed widow, “wounded by it, and frightened, as if she felt inside the same disruption” (97). Elena wants to talk to Lila, but she is gone.

At Lila’s house, Elena realizes that she is not happy. Lila, without her or Stefano, goes out with their old friends from the neighborhood and even has an ice cream with Antonio, who leaves in September to do military service. Elena wonders whether Lila wants revenge for Elena’s own trip to the dressmaker’s with Stefano.

Lila announces that, because Stefano has refused to allow her wedding photograph be displayed in the Piazza dei Martiri store, Elena has won the bet. As a result, she implores, Lila will have to begin studying, even as Elena cannot stand the thought of Lila competing with her anymore. 

As soon as Elena is alone, she begins to sympathize with Lila’s reasoning, her wish to delay motherhood, and to study again. Elena notices the bodies of the mothers in the old neighborhood, bodies sick and “misshapen,” which have lost their femininity (102). Elena looks forward to a time when, as in their childhood, Lila will be first at school and she second. Lila’s presence as a competing student would “give meaning back to studying” (101).

One day when Elena is at the beach, looking after the stationer’s girls, she is surprised by the sight of Nina’s sister, Marisa Sarratore, as well as Alfonso, Lila, and Antonio. Antonio ignores Elena and dives into the water. When Lila asks Elena about the books Professor Galiani has lent her, Elena says that she must begin studying again. Lila says that she has a responsibility to manage the new grocery. The she announces that she is pregnant.

Lila undertakes a period of “feverish activity,” arranging the operations of the new grocery and the existing one (107). She is also casual about opening the cash register and helping herself when she or her friends need money. One day at the beach, when Elena is looking after the stationer’s girls, Lila appears and confesses that she is repulsed by her pregnancy and has no natural way with children. Elena challenges her to play with Linda, the stationer’s youngest daughter and leaves the other girls in her care too, while she reads. Then she hears shouts because Linda is bleeding, screaming, and crying. Lila says that Linda’s sisters made her fall and abandons Elena there with the girls.

Elena loses her job, but Lila does not care and is more concerned with how her husband has changed his mind and sold the image of her in her wedding dress to the Solaras. Lila asks Elena to accompany her to the Piazza dei Martiri, the new store’s location. There, the Solaras lay the image of Lila on the floor and Lila, enlisting Elena’s help, takes a roll of black paper and places strips of it over the photograph. When she finishes, “the body of the bride appear[s] cruelly shredded” (119). At first, everyone in the crowd is horrified, but Elena explains the modernity of Lila’s endeavor, and Michele Solara appreciates that Lila has “‘erased yourself deliberately […] to show how well a woman’s thigh goes with those shoes”’ (121). Lila announces that the work is not finished, because she has to add color to it.