Insomnia: My Brilliant Friend
I recently saw the New York Times list of the best books of this century and found Elena Ferrante’s L’amica geniale at the top of the list. This is one of the exercises I try to do with my art consumption and explore languages, cultures, artistic fields that haven’t passed through my senses. Reading this book would be a challenge to try to understand why the book is so acclaimed and also an opportunity to get into Italian literature. No, I haven’t read Dante’s Inferno, Machiavelli’s The Prince or even Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Forgive me for these cultural shortcomings, even I don’t know why I read some of the books I do.
However, let’s get back to that initial point, which is my experience with Elena Ferrante’s book. I know, those who are familiar with the book are already shouting that it’s the first in a series of four, entitled The Neapolitan Novels. It might be prudent to write about L’amica geniale when I’ve finished the set, but since prudence bores me and I like to be surprised by what I think at different times, here goes.
I always make this reference in my texts and I’ll give you a very short summary of what the book is about for those who are interested and don’t want spoilers:
This story is about the complex friendship between Elena Grego (known as Lenú), our narrator, and her friend, Raffaella Cerullo (called Lila). Lila is indeed a brilliant friend and this book also explores what Naples was like in the 1950s, with a variety of gastronomic, artistic, cultural and social references. First loves, first discoveries, jealousy and even sexual abuse are explored. What you realise from this book is that everything ends up being intense and never feels forced in order to make an impact. The characters are naturally fiery, sure of themselves.
I apologise, this is where I have to separate myself from those who don’t want spoilers because I already feel myself slipping into the classic university concept of someone who has to write 20000 characters and has realised that they’ve exhausted their content at 2000. Curiously, we’re now at 2094 characters, but that’s not the point here. Come on, it’s just us now. Perfect, you know what happens, don’t you?
Hang on, I can see they’re still lurking here. Come on, come on, go and read the book, we’ll talk again, this text won’t go away.
So when we open the book, it’s 2010. Lenú receives a call from Rino, Lila’s son, explaining that his mother has disappeared. I was immediately interested in this book because it uses a writing technique that leaves the future completely open. The next moment we begin to realise what the two friends’ childhoods were like, but we are already aware that there is a son involved and that they have known each other for a long time.
Elena and Raffaela have known each other since they were very young. They both went to the same school and it’s in this environment that we realise that Lila is special and quite intelligent. Many of the school challenges end up seeming quite simple to Lila and this is one of the first hallmarks of Lenú’s friendship with Lila. There is always a more advanced figure and another figure who follows, as if under the effect of magnetism. The magnet is one of the best representations of this friendship because Lenú feels an admiration for Lila, but will also feel a distance when the two are faced with the same challenge, be it at school, playing or even in relation to boys and crushes.
The disparate economic possibilities between the two will be something that marks the relationship, especially as Lenú will be able to go to secondary school, while Lila will have to help her parents with the family business — the shoe shop — together with her brother, Rino. In this case, we’re talking about 11-year-old girls with the harsh economic, social and cultural reality of having to stop studying to support the family. As Lenú explains throughout the book, even if it sometimes seems like mere adoration, Lila is naturally a genius and would have the intellectual possibilities to continue studying, something that is prevented for financial reasons.
There’s even an event where, before Lenú’s exams, Lila takes her to see the sea, but ends up giving up on this plan and brings Elena back home. Jealousy abounds in this story, but it’s not unrealistic. It’s not easy to see someone who’s been with you forever surpassing you. Perhaps it’s even more difficult for Lila because she’s always been told that she has every chance of going very far. However, she is held back and perhaps tries to keep Lenú close to her, but recognises that it’s not the right thing to do. This feeling isn’t expressed directly, but even for Lenú the behaviour of turning back is strange in Lila, a very determined person, not given to turning back.
Lenú will continue at school, albeit with some difficulties, and Lila will go to the shoe shop to work with her brother, Rino, and her father, Fernando. Initially, Lila still studies with Lenú until one day she tells her that she is preparing a secret project with her brother to design a line of fine shoes for men and women.
Growing up isn’t easy
Here I’ll have to pause the summary to explain that Ferrante is phenomenal at including all the natural dilemmas of growing up while telling the stories involving the two characters. The story also works because we learn that Lenú doesn’t feel confident about her body and ends up investing even more in school in order to feel that she has some value. The very magnetic attraction she feels for Lila is also a reflection of this, of this need to aspire to a figure that seems more attractive, more incredible, more confident and, ultimately, more secure.
This ability to develop the characters is quite subtle and there are many complications that these personalities face that will be very similar to something we had growing up. They probably even passed us by without us really reflecting on them, but this is where Ferrante displays her literary talent in an organic way.
Let’s leave this behind to speed up the summary. Lenú begins to realise that Lila is developing and growing in a way that generates a lot of male attraction, largely because of her quite natural mystique. This realisation is proven at a dance at Gigliola Spagnuolo’s house where Lila dances with several boys, paying no attention to any of them. Lila is just enjoying the moment, oblivious to anyone who shares the dance with her and it is at one of these moments that the Solara brothers, Marcello and Michele, appear. Both are known to be from a family with immense influence in the neighbourhood, whether financial or social.
The brothers chase Lila’s male friends away and the two friends, Lila and Lenú, end up leaving the party to go with their friends. This may seem like incidental information, but keep Marcello by your side. Don’t let him get away, make sure he doesn’t disappear from your sight. It’s important, even more than you realise!
There’s no end to the fighting between communities and Rino will push the idea that he wants to have more fireworks for the New Year’s Eve festivities than the Solaras, which will lead to a showdown between the two sides that only ends with Marcello and Michele shooting (and I don’t mean fireworks here) in the direction of Rino, Lenú, Lila and their friends.
The relationship between Rino and Lila suffers a setback precisely because of this event, not so much because the sister scolds her brother, but more because his attitude is too exuberant. The situation doesn’t improve when Rino decides to show his father the shoes that the two brothers have been working on, which makes Fernando angry when he realises that his children are working behind his back. For Lenú, school is going very well, but her childhood sweetheart, Nino, shows no interest in her. Meanwhile, Marcello Solara is keen to marry Lila. Remember that Marcello who’s still in storage? That was the important one. The boy pays for TVs, the boy goes to dinners, the boy promises to buy the shoes mentioned above (but doesn’t), the boy really wants to marry Lila. Yet, she has nothing but contempt for him. The problem is that a marriage to Marcello would represent a huge financial change for Raffaela Cerullo’s family.
The hardships of loving someone
I’m now going to make a big leap to the end like a frog would jump over water lilies: each subject will be quickly explained until I reach the other shore.
Lenú is invited by her former teacher Maestro Oliviero to visit her sister in order to enjoy the summer on the island of Ischia and everything goes well until the day Nino Sarratore’s family turns up. Lenú’s attraction for Nino never goes away, but she ends up being abused by his father, Donato Sarratore, and decides to end the holiday. The fact that Lila doesn’t reply to her letters also worries her, but this indecent touch on the part of Nino’s father will mentally scar Lenú.
Lila tries to push Marcello away and eventually realises that Stefano Carracci is interested in her and wants to get married. Stefano will invest in the family business and will also take Lila as his wife, something that pleases her a lot more than a possible marriage with Solara.
Lenú feels she has to be on the same level as Lila and starts going out with Antonio, a mechanic who is immensely in love with Lenú, but incredibly simple, and it’s always easy to realise that Lenú doesn’t feel any attraction to him, but can’t accept that Lila is more ‘advanced’ than her. This is actually one of the most interesting features of the book: the naturalness with which this subject is approached shows a deep understanding of the human condition and, fundamentally, of our insecurity. However, I’ll come back to it in a moment, I’ll finish explaining the book in the meantime.
Before the wedding day, Stefano begins to see that the shoe business isn’t going as well as he’d hoped and suggests inviting Silvio Solara to the wedding in order to create good relations in the neighbourhood. Lila doesn’t like the idea at all, but agrees that it’s best to avoid any further trouble, asking only that Marcello doesn’t show up at the wedding — he has already started rumours about Lila in the neighbourhood.
When the wedding day arrives, Lenú accompanies her. For me, this is where the book shows this human analysis in a unique way when Elena says:
I had never seen her naked, I was embarrassed. Today I can say that it was the embarrassment of gazing with pleasure at her body, of being the not impartial witness of her sixteen-year-old’s beauty a few hours before Stefano touched her, penetrated her, disfigured her, perhaps, by making her pregnant. At the time it was just a tumultuous sensation of necessary awkwardness, a state in which you cannot avert the gaze or take away the hand without recognizing your own turmoil, without, by that retreat, declaring it, hence without coming into conflict with the undisturbed innocence of the one who is the cause of the turmoil, without expressing by that rejection the violent emotion that overwhelms you, so that it forces you to stay, to rest your gaze on the childish shoulders, on the breasts and stiffly cold nipples, on the narrow hips and the tense buttocks, on the black sex, on the long legs, on the tender knees, on the curved ankles, on the elegant feet; and to act as if it’s nothing, when instead everything is there, present, in the poor dim room, amid the worn furniture, on the uneven, water-stained floor, and your heart is agitated, your veins inflamed.
I washed her with slow, careful gestures, first letting her squat in the tub, then asking her to stand up: I still have in my ears the sound of the dripping water, and the impression that the copper of the tub had a consistency not different from Lila’s flesh, which was smooth, solid, calm. I had a confusion of feelings and thoughts: embrace her, weep with her, kiss her, pull her hair, laugh, pretend to sexual experience and instruct her in a learned voice, distancing her with words just at the moment of greatest closeness. But in the end there was only the hostile thought that I was washing her, from her hair to the soles of her feet, early in the morning, just so that Stefano could sully her in the course of the night. I imagined her naked as she was at that moment, entwined with her husband, in the bed in the new house, while the train clattered under their windows and his violent flesh entered her with a sharp blow, like the cork pushed by the palm into the neck of a wine bottle. And it suddenly seemed to me that the only remedy against the pain I was feeling, that I would feel, was to find a corner secluded enough so that Antonio could do to me, at the same time, the exact same thing.
This statement shows not only the fear of losing Lila, the fear of being abandoned by the whole world at the same time as her best friend finds love, but also the fear of seeing her suffer.
The wedding takes place, Lila and Stefano enjoy the event where everyone comes together, but with the celebration, discord also begins to grow over what is happening, with Lila’s family believing that they have been badly served. It’s at this point that Marcello enters the party. His entrance doesn’t go unnoticed, not because he’s Solara’s son, but because Lila realises that the shoes he’s wearing are the ones she prepared with her brother and that Stefano had bought. It’s at this point that the question from Lila to Lenú that we read about 10 pages ago echoes like a scream inside a cave:
What’s going to happen to me, Lenù?
Growing up really isn’t easy
As I’ve already explained, this is the first book in a series of four and I’ve only read the first one. It’s truly one of the best books I’ve ever read, a highly interesting experience of the human condition. What I appreciated most is that childhood and adolescence are not seen as rosy times, but neither are they as sinister as medieval times. The search for recognition, the need for love, the insecurity with physical and emotional growth, all these pieces of a personal puzzle that make us up.
It’s the question of relationships that Ferrante describes in such an artistic and natural way. The relationship between Rino and Lila is affected when Rino wants to show the Solara that he can also compete with them and have a fireworks display to match. The need for affirmation is something that all the characters seek, and yet some are highly explosive, as is the case with Rino, and others are absurdly reserved, Lenú being the perfect example.
Part of this difference is also explained by their living conditions, which, in the case of these two, puts them at two parallel points: Rino has to help the family and work with his father, while Lenú has the opportunity to continue at school. This doesn’t mean that she doesn’t help the family, but she is privileged in comparison to Lila and Rino. However, as we see throughout the book, Lenú never feels any advantage over Lila. Her friend will always be the great friend, the one who could do all the exercises at school, the one who has a charm that attracts all the boys and who will get married.
Lenú feels like she’s falling behind Lila, and her relationship with Antonio is precisely because she wants to be in a relationship so as not to be second to Lila once again. However, Antonio ends up taking second place to Lenú’s love interest, Nino Sarratore. Lenú’s experience is always one of trying to please someone else and there is a noticeable lack of self-love and a major search for external appreciation to compensate for this absence.
What this work shows so organically is the complication of growing up. Everything becomes even more complicated when we feel that others around us are progressing much faster than we are, which makes the progress we feel we are achieving empty and even non-existent. It may even feel like we’re regressing because the projects we’ve invested in aren’t having the success we anticipated, as Lenú feels about school, her relationship with Antonio and even her friendship with Lila. At these individual crossroads you can lose that sense of identity, consideration for others and how they feel about you, and even some of the innocence that is a hallmark of this period of life.
Going back to the beginning of the book, this is why Ferrante’s method is so captivating. A lot of the challenges faced by Lenú (Elena Grego) and Lila (Raffaella Cerullo) — I explain again who’ s called who because I’ve been calling them by their nicknames for a long time — have a description very in depth that seems dispensable, given that we already know that the two will be friends in the future and that Lila even has a son who, curiously, will have the same name as her brother. Don’t spoil what’s going to happen in the next books and why the son and brother have the same name. I’m sure it’s because all the names were exhausted at the civil registry.
However, sometimes it’s not the journey that’s great. The great thing is the opportunity to travel with that friend. Hang on to your brilliant friends.
P.S.: I do know there is a show by HBO that seems to have really good ratings. Yet, everyone that knows me already understands how bad I’m with shows, I rarely finish one. But, if it suits you, go for it. I won’t hold you any longer.
Until the next insomnia,
Pedro Barreiro
