This leaning agains the wall summarises my feelings reading this book.
Podcast where I discuss this extremely intense book with my friend, in Portuguese, here:
This book picks up almost immediately where My Brilliant Friend ended (apart from a small prelude where Lenù announces she destroyed some of Lila’s personal belongings, which enfuriated me), at Lila’s wedding reception right after shoegate. Lenù reflects on how she wished Lila and her would leave together and start a new life together elsewhere - which to me only made more true the lesbian innuendos I had felt in the previous book (I know this is a very controversial topic that not everyone will agree on) -, but instead feels disappointed when Lila departs for a very rapey wedding night.
Lila undergoes all sorts of humilliation in her marriage, something the local folk seem to believe suits her; this is all too weird to a modern reader, but it was 1960 in Southern Italy, violence (domestic violence included) and patriarchy were the norm, and Lila had seen this marriage as a convenient way to climb out of poverty after her dreams of studying were crushed.
The plot starts somewhat slow, with Lila financing Lenù’s studies and trying to regain some sort of control in her life, a control which is always negotiated with her husband or the Solara brothers and not completely her own. In the meantime, Antonio breaks up with Lenù, Lenù keeps pining after Nino, Lenù and Lila visit Lenù’s favourite high school teacher at some weird house party, Lila resents Lenù’s new high school life, Lenù gets a summer job or two. The two girls’ lives seem to follow different paths, until the one summer where Lila asks Lenù to go with her to Ischia instead of working at the bookstore. This is where the book picks up the pace and becomes impossible to put down.
The girls are around 18 and Nino and his friend Bruno, sausage factory heir, are also at the beach. The summer gets intense, melodramatic, and spirals out of control with what feels like intense betrayal and bad life choices. Lenù focuses on school to try and forget what happened and move on from Napoli neighbourhood life, and gets a scholarship to a university in Pisa, where she expands her world views, feels inferior to her colleagues, and ultimately gets engaged to Pietro Airota, a fellow student from a high end intellectual bourgeois family, and writes a book where she tells the events of that one summer.
By the end of the book, Lila is super unlikable; she experienced her own betrayals, has a small son, terrible living arrangements (after having started the book in a fancy new apartment) and a very bad job at the above mentioned sausage factory, but as the reader I couldn’t feel much for her as it feels as if she brought it upon herself. In the meantime, Lenù’s life at the university bored me a bit, she herself commenting on how time passed more slowly when Lila was not in the picture. However, their lives are still entangled, they are still connected to each other - and the book title once again seems to refer to both of the girls. The book then finishes in a cliffhanger, that I did not quite see coming (but apparently everyone else did) and which was honestly not as powerful as the ending of the first book.
This book is full of strong emotions and feelings and portrays teenage angst very well. There are severak subtleties and contradictions in how the characters interact and disregard each others’ feelings that make them seem very real, and I think a lot of it is due to the very simple prose. Lenù projects all her insecurities onto Lila, who does the same regarding Lenù; each woman sees in the other the possibilities no longer available to her, and several qualities that they don’t see in themselves. The narrative is gripping (telenovela worthy) and this is the book’s biggest strenght, making it my favourite of the series so far.
I also loved what I called “the Pinuccia subplot” as she was a very realistic 18 year old girl figuring out what she was going to leave behind as she started a new life after a few uninformed choices. Ultimately, neither she, nor Lila, nor Lenù succeed in what they want from life, and it’s their upbringing and the fact that they are women that drags them behind.
Translated by Margarida Periquito
If you’re in Portugal, you can get this edition via wook