By Book Club Team 
Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend is a mesmerizing coming-of-age novel that charts the complex and often volatile friendship between two girls growing up in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Italy, in the 1950s. The first in Ferrante’s critically acclaimed Neapolitan Novels series, the book dives deep into the intricacies of female friendship, the challenges of poverty, and the desire for self-definition in a patriarchal and class-bound society.
My Brilliant Friend Summary
The novel begins in the present day with a now-elderly Elena learning that Lila has vanished without a trace. This disappearance prompts Elena to write the story of their lives, starting from their early years in Naples. From the beginning, the reader understands that this relationship is not only central to Elena’s life, but also difficult and possibly obsessive. Lila may be gone physically, but she continues to live inside Elena’s mind.
Elena and Lila grow up in a neighborhood riddled with violence, family feuds, misogyny, and poverty. The community is tightly knit but deeply hierarchical, ruled unofficially by men like Don Achille, a local figure associated with power and fear.
Despite the harshness of their environment, Elena and Lila are both bright and curious. Their friendship begins when they’re very young, sparked by a shared desire to understand the world beyond their limited surroundings. Lila is fearless and rebellious; Elena is more timid and eager to please. From early on, Elena sees Lila as a kind of mirror — and often a challenge. Lila’s natural brilliance becomes a driving force in Elena’s own pursuit of academic excellence.
Their bond is complicated by competitiveness, jealousy, and admiration. Elena often feels she is living in Lila’s shadow, yet it’s Lila who is ultimately denied further education, forced to leave school after elementary years to help with her family’s shoe business. Elena, with encouragement from her teacher and mother, continues on the academic path. Still, she constantly compares herself to Lila, whose intellect seems to outshine everyone’s — even without formal education.
As the girls grow into their teenage years, their friendship deepens, but so do the cracks. Elena begins to move between worlds — from the dirty streets of Naples to the more cultured environment of her middle school and later high school. She experiences the tension of being caught between two identities: the educated girl who speaks Italian well, and the daughter of a poor family tied to Naples’ dialect and traditions.
Lila, on the other hand, channels her ambition into other pursuits. She begins designing shoes with her brother Rino, hoping they can launch a successful business. Despite never leaving the neighborhood, Lila becomes a kind of local celebrity — known for her beauty, her sharp tongue, and her unrelenting will.
The novel closely follows the emotional push-and-pull between the girls. Elena wants to shine on her own but is constantly haunted by Lila’s brilliance. Lila seems to both inspire and provoke Elena — at times encouraging her, at others subtly undermining her confidence.
Romantic entanglements also begin to surface. Both girls attract attention from the neighborhood boys, especially the powerful and volatile Solara brothers. Elena becomes involved with Antonio and later Nino Sarratore — a boy from a slightly higher social class, whom she idolizes for his intellect and sensitivity.
Lila’s relationships are more dramatic. Though she initially despises the attention of the Solara brothers, she eventually finds herself engaged to Stefano Carracci, the wealthy son of Don Achille. This engagement — and the extravagant wedding that follows — becomes a turning point in the novel and a symbol of Lila’s entry into adulthood.
Elena is both awed and disturbed by Lila’s new role as a wife. The wedding, which closes the novel, is a spectacle of wealth and power, but it’s also a moment of betrayal: Stefano has done business with the Solaras, something Lila explicitly asked him not to do. The final lines leave a chilling note of foreshadowing, suggesting that Lila’s married life may be far more complicated — and darker — than it appears.
At its core, My Brilliant Friend is about identity — and how it is shaped, distorted, and sharpened through our closest relationships. Elena and Lila love each other deeply, but their connection is charged with rivalry and comparison. Elena’s self-image is often dependent on how she stacks up to Lila. Lila, too, uses Elena as a kind of benchmark, even if she pretends not to care.
Their friendship is never simple. It’s full of contradictions: tenderness and cruelty, admiration and envy, dependency and defiance. It’s also fiercely honest — a rare kind of emotional intimacy that Ferrante captures with brutal clarity.
Ferrante’s Naples is almost a character in itself — a city marked by postwar trauma, economic inequality, and social immobility. The neighborhood feels both claustrophobic and deeply alive. It’s a place where people know each other too well, where gossip is currency, and where the future often seems predetermined by birth. The contrast between Elena’s life in academia and Lila’s entrapment in the neighborhood underscores the class dynamics that drive much of the novel’s emotional tension.
Plot Overview
The story is told from the perspective of Elena Greco, a shy, studious girl who grows up feeling like a shadow to her best friend Lila Cerullo — brilliant, bold, and instinctively rebellious. From their early childhood, the two girls form an intense bond, forged through a shared desire to escape the constraints of their working-class neighborhood. Despite their similarities, they diverge in crucial ways: Elena continues her education, while Lila is forced to abandon her academic path due to financial constraints.
The novel spans from their early school years to Lila’s wedding at sixteen, a pivotal event that marks the end of their childhood and the beginning of adulthood. Throughout, Ferrante explores how education, ambition, jealousy, and societal pressures shape and sometimes fracture their bond. As Lila dazzles those around her with her intelligence and beauty, Elena grapples with her own insecurities, often defining herself in contrast to — and in competition with — her friend.
Themes and Symbolism
One of the central themes of My Brilliant Friend is the tension between ambition and limitation. Both girls are brilliant in their own right, but only Elena is allowed to pursue higher education. Lila, despite her immense intellect, is pushed into early adulthood and marriage, highlighting the gender and class barriers that restrict her.
Ferrante also presents a raw and nuanced depiction of female friendship — a mixture of love, rivalry, admiration, and resentment. Elena is both inspired and haunted by Lila’s brilliance, often measuring her own worth by her ability to keep up with or surpass her friend. The friendship is not idealized but rendered with honesty, showing how it can be both a source of strength and a site of psychological struggle.
The setting plays a crucial role as well. Ferrante paints postwar Naples with unflinching detail — the violence, the misogyny, the power of local crime families — creating a world where ambition is constantly at odds with survival.
Style and Voice
Ferrante’s writing is deeply introspective and emotionally raw. Her prose, though straightforward, carries immense psychological depth. The narrative is infused with the quiet intensity of Elena’s perspective, a lens through which readers witness the complexities of growing up female in a world that often seeks to silence or ignore girls’ experiences.
Critical Reception
Critics and readers alike have praised My Brilliant Friend for its realism, emotional intelligence, and powerful storytelling. Many have highlighted how Ferrante captures the inner lives of women with a rare clarity. The novel’s portrayal of friendship — full of contradictions and unspoken tensions — resonates deeply, especially for readers who’ve experienced similar dynamics.
The book’s exploration of identity, particularly how one woman constructs her sense of self in relation to another, makes it more than just a tale of two friends. It’s a profound examination of how our closest relationships shape us, for better or worse.
Final Thoughts
My Brilliant Friend is a rich, layered novel that goes far beyond a simple story of friendship. It’s about class, ambition, womanhood, and the quiet, often painful process of becoming oneself. Through Elena and Lila, Ferrante gives voice to the hidden lives of girls — their intellect, their desires, and their relentless yearning for more.
Whether you’re drawn in by the intimate character study, the socio-political backdrop of 1950s Naples, or simply the beauty of Ferrante’s prose, My Brilliant Friend offers a deeply human and unforgettable reading experience.