Dolls Lost, Friendship Found

The story begins with the disappearance of two dolls—Tina and Nu—belonging to two young girls, Elena (Lenù) and Lila, in a poor neighborhood of Naples. This event, seemingly trivial, becomes the catalyst for a fierce, competitive, and symbiotic friendship that will shape both their lives. Their search for the dolls, their descent into the dark cellar, and their confrontation with the local ogre, Don Achille, set the tone for a world where violence, poverty, and the struggle for dignity are ever-present. The dolls' loss is a metaphor for the innocence and security the girls will never truly possess, and their quest for them is the beginning of a lifelong journey to define themselves against and with each other.

Violence in the Shadows

Growing up in postwar Naples, Elena and Lila are surrounded by violence—domestic, social, and political. The neighborhood is ruled by families like the Solaras and the Carraccis, whose power is maintained through intimidation and crime. The girls witness and experience brutality at home and in the streets, learning early that survival requires cunning and resilience. The murder of Don Achille, the neighborhood's "ogre," and the subsequent rise of the Solaras mark a shift in the local power structure, but violence remains a constant. This environment forges the girls' characters: Lila becomes fierce and unpredictable, Elena cautious and ambitious, both determined to escape the fate of the women around them.

School, Books, and Betrayal

Both girls are brilliant, but only Elena is allowed to continue her education beyond elementary school, thanks to her family's grudging support and her teacher's encouragement. Lila, despite her obvious genius, is forced by her family's poverty and conservatism to work in the family shoe shop. This divergence is a source of pain and rivalry, but also of inspiration: Elena studies obsessively to keep up with Lila, who continues to learn on her own, devouring books from the library. Their intellectual bond is both a lifeline and a battleground, as each measures her worth against the other's achievements and failures.

The Neighborhood's Grip

Despite their aspirations, the girls are continually pulled back by the neighborhood's expectations and limitations. The Solaras' growing influence, the violence of the Carraccis, and the petty ambitions of their own families create a web that is difficult to escape. Lila's family opens a shoe factory, but the business is soon entangled with the Solaras' criminal enterprises. Elena, even as she excels in school and dreams of a different life, feels the weight of her origins. The neighborhood is both a prison and a source of identity, shaping their relationships, choices, and sense of self.

Girlhood Rivalries, Womanly Bonds

As they grow into adolescence, the girls' friendship is marked by intense rivalry and deep affection. They compete in school, in love, and in ambition, each pushing the other to greater heights and deeper despair. Lila's beauty and charisma attract the attention of the neighborhood's most powerful men, while Elena's academic success opens doors to a world beyond. Their bond is tested by jealousy, betrayal, and the shifting dynamics of power between them, but it endures, sustained by a shared history and a mutual recognition of each other's brilliance and pain.

Men, Mothers, and Marriage

The girls' transition to womanhood is fraught with the expectations and constraints of a patriarchal society. Lila is married off at sixteen to Stefano Carracci, a union that promises escape but delivers violence and disillusionment. Elena, meanwhile, pursues her studies, eventually marrying Pietro, a respectable but uninspiring academic. Both women become mothers, and their experiences of marriage and motherhood are marked by ambivalence, sacrifice, and the struggle to assert their own desires. Their relationships with their own mothers—demanding, disappointed, and often cruel—haunt them, shaping their sense of self and their approach to their own children.

Ambition, Escape, Return

Elena's academic success takes her out of Naples, first to Pisa, then to Florence and Turin, where she achieves literary fame. Lila, after a disastrous marriage and the loss of her daughter, Tina, to a mysterious disappearance, remains in the neighborhood, building a modest business and becoming a local authority. Yet neither woman truly escapes: Elena is haunted by her origins and by Lila's judgment, while Lila is consumed by grief and the neighborhood's relentless demands. Their attempts to reinvent themselves are continually undermined by the past, by the city, and by each other.

The Price of Success

Elena's literary career brings her recognition and financial security, but also alienation from her family, her daughters, and her roots. Her success is built, in part, on the stories and sufferings of the neighborhood, and especially of Lila, who accuses her of exploitation and betrayal. The publication of Elena's novel, which fictionalizes their lives, is a turning point: it cements her reputation but destroys their friendship. The cost of ambition is loneliness, and the realization that art cannot redeem the losses it records.

Children, Choices, Consequences

The women's children—Dede, Elsa, Imma, Gennaro, Tina—become battlegrounds for their hopes and fears. Dede and Elsa leave for America, seeking freedom from their mother's expectations and the neighborhood's constraints. Imma, Elena's youngest, becomes a surrogate daughter for Lila after Tina's disappearance, blurring the boundaries between the two families. Gennaro, Lila's son, struggles with addiction and failure, a casualty of the neighborhood's enduring violence. The choices the women make reverberate through their children's lives, shaping destinies in ways they cannot control or foresee.

Disappearances and Endings

Tina's disappearance is the central trauma of Lila's life, a wound that never heals and that ultimately leads her to withdraw from the world. The neighborhood itself is eroded by crime, drugs, and the collapse of old certainties. Friends and family die or vanish: the Solaras are murdered, Rino succumbs to addiction, old alliances dissolve. Lila, obsessed with erasing all traces of herself, eventually disappears, leaving Elena to mourn her absence and to question the meaning of their shared history.

Writing, Memory, and Revenge

Elena's compulsion to write is both a means of survival and a form of revenge against Lila, who has always both inspired and undermined her. The act of writing becomes a way to assert control over a chaotic reality, to fix memories that are otherwise unstable and contested. Yet the power of narrative is double-edged: it can wound as well as heal, and the stories Elena tells are as much about her own needs as about the truth of the past. The final act of restitution—the return of the lost dolls—raises questions about what can be recovered, and what must remain lost.

The City That Devours

Naples is more than a backdrop; it is a living force that shapes and consumes its inhabitants. Its beauty and squalor, its violence and vitality, are inextricable from the lives of Elena and Lila. The city's cycles of hope and disappointment, its capacity for both renewal and destruction, mirror the women's own struggles. In the end, Naples is both the origin and the inescapable destiny of their friendship, their families, and their stories.

The Unraveling of Certainty

As the women age, the certainties that once sustained them—about love, ambition, motherhood, and even memory—begin to unravel. The boundaries between self and other, between truth and fiction, between past and present, dissolve. Lila's "dissolving margins" become a metaphor for the instability of all meaning, and Elena's writing, for all its discipline, cannot impose order on a world that resists it. The story ends not with resolution but with the acknowledgment of loss, ambiguity, and the limits of understanding.

The Last Trace

In the final pages, Elena receives a package containing the lost dolls of her childhood, returned to her by Lila, who has vanished without a trace. The gesture is both a restitution and a final erasure, a reminder that some losses can never be repaired, and that the stories we tell are always incomplete. The friendship that began with the loss of the dolls ends with their return, but the meaning of that circle remains elusive. The city, the neighborhood, the women, and their children continue, marked by absence, memory, and the stories that survive them.

Characters

Elena Greco (Lenù)

Elena is the protagonist and narrator, whose life is defined by her friendship and rivalry with Lila. Born into poverty in Naples, she is driven by a desire to escape her origins through education and writing. Her relationship with Lila is both a source of inspiration and a wound: she measures herself against Lila's intelligence, beauty, and charisma, and is haunted by the fear of being second-best. Elena's ambition leads her to academic and literary success, but also to alienation from her family, her daughters, and her roots. As a mother, she is loving but often distracted, torn between her work and her children. Her writing is both a means of survival and a form of revenge, as she seeks to fix in words the chaos of her life and her city. In old age, she is left to reckon with loss, memory, and the limits of storytelling.

Raffaella Cerullo (Lila, Lina)

Lila is Elena's childhood friend and lifelong rival, a woman of extraordinary intelligence, creativity, and will. Forced by poverty and family to abandon her education, she becomes a shoemaker, a wife, a mother, a businesswoman, and a local power. Lila is fiercely independent, unpredictable, and often cruel, but also deeply loyal and loving. Her life is marked by violence, loss, and the struggle to assert herself in a world that seeks to erase her. The disappearance of her daughter, Tina, is the central trauma of her life, leading her to withdraw from the world and ultimately to erase all traces of herself. Lila's "dissolving margins" are both a psychological condition and a metaphor for the instability of identity, memory, and meaning.

Nino Sarratore

Nino is the object of both Elena and Lila's youthful passion, a brilliant and ambitious boy who becomes a successful academic and politician. He is charming, seductive, and perpetually dissatisfied, moving from woman to woman, cause to cause, always seeking the next opportunity. For Elena, he represents both the possibility of escape and the danger of self-betrayal; for Lila, he is a mirror of her own restless intelligence. Nino's relationships are marked by betrayal and disappointment, and his ultimate fate is one of decline and disillusionment.

Enzo Scanno

Enzo is Lila's partner after her disastrous marriage, a former fruit seller who becomes a self-taught computer expert and business partner. He is devoted to Lila and her son, Gennaro, and provides stability and support in the face of her volatility and grief. Enzo's loyalty is unwavering, but he is ultimately unable to save Lila from her suffering or to hold their family together. His decency and resilience stand in contrast to the violence and chaos of the neighborhood.

Gennaro Cerullo (Rino)

Gennaro is Lila's son, named after her beloved brother. He is a sensitive and intelligent boy, but is drawn into the neighborhood's cycles of addiction and failure. His relationship with his mother is fraught with love, anger, and disappointment. Gennaro's struggles with drugs and his inability to escape the neighborhood's grip are a source of anguish for both Lila and Elena, and his fate is a testament to the enduring power of the past.

Dede and Elsa Airota

Dede and Elsa are Elena's older daughters, raised in the shadow of their mother's ambition and the legacy of Naples. Both are intelligent and independent, but their paths diverge: Dede is serious, principled, and determined to escape her mother's influence, while Elsa is rebellious, impulsive, and drawn to the neighborhood's dangers. Their choices reflect the possibilities and limitations of their generation, and their departures mark the end of an era for Elena.

Immacolata (Imma) Sarratore

Imma is Elena's youngest daughter, the child of her relationship with Nino. She is caught between worlds: the neighborhood and the wider world, her mother and her absent father, the legacy of Lila and the ambitions of Elena. Imma's longing for connection and her struggle to define herself are emblematic of the novel's themes of loss, identity, and the search for meaning.

The Solaras (Michele, Marcello, Manuela)

The Solaras are the neighborhood's ruling family, whose wealth and influence are built on crime, corruption, and violence. Michele, obsessed with Lila, is both her tormentor and her victim; Marcello, Elisa's husband, is charming but ruthless; Manuela, their mother, is the keeper of the infamous "red book" of debts and secrets. Their rise and fall mirror the city's cycles of hope and disappointment, and their deaths mark the end of an era.

Carmen and Pasquale Peluso

Carmen and Pasquale are childhood friends of Elena and Lila, the children of a Communist carpenter. Pasquale's political idealism leads him into violence and ultimately to prison; Carmen's loyalty to her brother and her friends is unwavering, but she is unable to save him or herself from the neighborhood's decline. Their story is one of sacrifice, betrayal, and the enduring power of class and history.

Pietro Airota

Pietro is Elena's husband, a respectable academic from a prominent family. He is kind, intelligent, and supportive, but is ultimately unable to compete with Elena's ambition or to hold their family together. His relationship with Elena is marked by mutual respect and disappointment, and his eventual departure for America is both a liberation and a loss.

Plot Devices

Dual Narrative and Mirroring

The novels are structured around the dual narrative of Elena and Lila, whose lives mirror, compete with, and define each other. Their friendship is both a source of strength and a site of conflict, and the narrative continually returns to moments of doubling, reversal, and exchange: the lost dolls, the exchanged books, the parallel experiences of marriage, motherhood, and loss. This mirroring is both a plot device and a means of exploring the instability of identity and the porous boundaries between self and other.

The Neighborhood as Microcosm

Naples and the neighborhood are not just backdrops but active forces in the story, shaping the characters' destinies and reflecting the broader social and political changes of postwar Italy. The cycles of violence, poverty, and ambition that define the neighborhood are echoed in the lives of the protagonists, and the city's transformations—its moments of hope and collapse—are inseparable from the women's own struggles.

Dissolving Margins

Lila's recurring experience of "dissolving margins"—the sense that the boundaries between things, people, and selves are breaking down—serves as both a psychological condition and a metaphor for the instability of meaning, memory, and identity. This device is used to explore the fragility of the self, the unreliability of memory, and the impossibility of imposing order on a chaotic world.

Unreliable Narration and Memory

Elena's narration is marked by uncertainty, revision, and self-doubt. The story is continually interrupted by questions about what really happened, what was remembered or forgotten, what was invented or erased. The act of writing becomes both a means of survival and a form of violence, as Elena seeks to fix in words what resists being fixed, and to assert control over a reality that continually escapes her.

The Lost Child

The disappearance of Tina is the central trauma of the novels, a wound that never heals and that shapes the final decades of Lila's and Elena's lives. The lost child is both a literal event and a metaphor for all that is irretrievable: innocence, hope, the possibility of redemption. The search for Tina, and the inability to find her, becomes a meditation on loss, grief, and the limits of understanding.

Cycles of Power and Powerlessness

The narrative is structured around cycles of ambition, escape, and return, of hope and disappointment, of violence and renewal. The rise and fall of the Solaras, the successes and failures of the protagonists, the transformations of the city—all are part of a larger pattern in which progress is always provisional, and every gain is shadowed by loss.

Analysis

Last updated: May 19, 2025