My Brilliant Friend

Lila’s engagement and the modish outfits that Stefano buys her cause a stir in the neighborhood. When Stefano and Lila go to an expensive restaurant in Santa Lucia, they invite Elena, Rino, Antonio Cappuccio, and his sister, Ada, along. The girls find that they do not know how to behave around Lila, who “gave off a glow that seemed a violent slap in the face of the poverty of the neighborhood” (264). Elena feels that Lila has broken her old self and wonders with anticipation when she will break this shiny new self.

Elena prefers to go to dances and get pizza with the young people from the neighborhood rather than to entertain Stefano and Lila’s fancy lifestyle. Elena becomes interested in Antonio, who is now courting her. Lila’s engagement is a chief topic of conversation, and Pasquale Peluso, who has never moved on from Lila’s rejection, says that despite her intelligence Lila has allowed herself to be bought by the corrupt Carraccis. At one gathering, Pasquale claims the money that pays for Lila’s fine clothes “comes from the gold objects taken from mothers and hidden by Don Achille in the mattress” (268-69). When Pasquale and