After re-reading the Southern Reach trilogy, I decided to re-read the Naples quartet. In fact, I had not read the first book, My Brilliant Friend, at all. I was introduced to the quartet through the first season of the TV adaptation. Even before the first season, based on the first book, ended, I could not wait any longer and began to read the second novel, The Story of a New Name, just to find out what would happen to all the vivid characters that held my attention with a death grip. In the following few weeks, I inhaled the rest of the quartet.
So now I have gone back to read the first book. Many readers have complained about it --- too many characters, too many families, the names are hard to remember, the relationships are hard to entangle. I have the advantage of having been acquainted with most of them through the TV series, which have been released through Season 3 by now, and knowing what have happened to the characters. I can spend all my energy on parsing the relationships among the characters and the subtext of the events and the milieu.
One theme that is constantly brought up in all (I do mean ALL) reviews is the rivalry and jealousy between Lenu and Lila, the pair of central characters who grow up in the poor neighborhood in Naples from the 1950s through the next few decades. When I rushed through the novels from the second entry, I accepted this interpretation. However, a closer look at the text from the beginning has modified my opinion.
Observing the meticulous, extremely candid, and sometimes brutal dissection of Lenu's feelings and motivations from childhood, I am certain that this character is highly realistic and, assuming this is a portrait of a real person, her psychological profile is of a child with an ill-defined sense of self. She was shaped and molded by feedback from other people, including good grades at school, praises from her teachers, social expectations for a girl, comparison with other girls in the neighborhood (for example, the question of when one should have a boyfriend), opinions of boys and parents. She sought and was nourished by other people's good opinions. First and foremost, however, it is Lila who inspired and helped her to construct a clear sense of self, through not only their friendship and emotional intimacy, but also Lila's shadowing of and feedback on Lenu's academic pursuits. From the elementary school up to at least middle school, Lenu was often drifting into her family's and community's attitude: It's meaningless for a girl to get an education. The motivations that kept Lenu going were Maestra Oliviero's encouragement and intervention and Lila's competition. It is Lila's talent and competition that spurred Lenu to work harder academically. Through competition and comparison with Lila, Lenu felt more grounded and real as a person and strove from increasing self-realization. Even after Lila was forced to drop out of school by her father, her voracious reading and learning gave Lenu the motivation to keep going in middle school, until Lenu formed a solid enough self-identity as a good student (through academic success and professors' praises) that she could motivate herself to keep going and no longer needed Lila's drive. Even so, we should do well to remember that the title of the book, the brilliant friend, refers to Lenu, in a quote from Lila, who was urging her to pursue higher education, "You're my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls."
I'm not a psychologist, but it is a fairly common psychological phenomenon that some people have difficulty forming their own self-identify and rely on other people's reflections and feedback to define the edges of their own sense of person. This is why comparing oneself with others, or "keeping up with the Joneses" is so common. Humans are born with a soft brain, and the question of "who am I" takes a long time in development to answer, sometimes never solidify.
I am also convinced that the development of self-identity is a major theme in the quartet, as it is also symbolically and, perhaps more precisely figuratively, described in Lila's dissolution. Throughout the quartet, Lila is always the stronger character. She knew what she loved and hated and wanted. She had conviction even as a girl and drove much of the decisions and actions in relationship with others (Lenu and boys in the neighborhood). Nevertheless, she described again and again a sense of disintegration, when the boundaries between herself and other people around her or the environment dissolving into nothing, leading to the disappearance of her being. In the end she does disappear. Therein lies the mirror image and the irony of the two friends: one starts diffuse and solidifies with the other's help, while the other starts hard and unshakable and later dissolves into thin air. It is built into Lila's character early on that she is more tightly bound to the community, the neighborhood, and the people there than Lenu is. This may not be her predestined path. If she was able to escape the neighborhood early on, like Lenu did, she may have developed a taste for the wider world. Or maybe not. We will never find out.
Reading the novel made me realize how much the TV series sanitized the everyday, casual, pervasive violence in the domestic life. The audience collectively gasped when they were shown Lila being tossed out the window by her father over education and Lila showing up with a black eye after marrying the nice guy Stefano, but they never saw the many scenes described in the book, Lila being beaten and slapped by her father and brother pretty much throughout her adolescence, especially when she refused to accept Marcello Solara's romantic pursuit. For her, violence against her and other women like her is just another normal day in the neighborhood.
