My Brilliant Friend

Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

PROLOGUE

Reading Check

1. Why does Rino phone Elena (the narrator)?

2. What special nickname does only Elena call Rino’s mother?

3. What does Rino find when he looks inside his mother’s closet?

4. How does Elena feel about Rino’s mother’s attempts to disappear?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How is Rino characterized in the prologue?

2. What does Rino’s mother mean when she says that she wants to disappear without a trace, according to Elena?

3. Based on the details in the prologue, how is the relationship between Elena and Rino’s mother characterized?

4. Why does Elena write the text of the novel?

PART 1, CHAPTERS 1-18

Reading Check

1. Who taught six-year-old Lila how to read?

2. What does Elena say to Lila after throwing Nu, Lila’s doll, into Don Achille’s cellar?

3. What does Lila purchase with the money given to her and Elena by Don Achille?

4. What shocking event occurs at the end of Part 1?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does the confrontation with Don Achille transform Elena and Lila’s friendship?

2. Why does Maestra Oliviero treat Lila so coldly after her parents bar her from taking the middle school admissions exam?

3. Why does Lila take Elena to the sea but return so abruptly?

4. How do Lila’s and Elena’s reactions to the arrest of Alfredo Peluso differ?

Paired Resource

“Organized Crime Lurks Everywhere in My Brilliant Friend. Here’s the Real Story of the Rise of the Naples Underworld”

• This article from TIME Magazine contextualizes the allusions in the text to the Camorrist Solaras and the organized crime operations of Don Achille with a historical look at the real-life rise and influence of these forces in Italy during the post-war years.
• This information connects to themes of Money and Promotion and Men, Women, and Power.
• How does Ferrante make use of historical allusion to build the atmosphere of the neighborhood as a setting? How do the forces of organized crime impact characters’ lives?

“Life for Women in Italy: From World War I to Today”

• Mara Mori, a native of Italy and PhD in Modern History from the University of Bologna, analyzes the social and cultural impacts that World War I, World War II, and the post-war years had on life for Italian women. This resource contextualizes the post-war period of the novel and the opportunities available to women then. While they were not barred from pursuits like education, they still faced significant barriers to it, prompting connections to the limited access the girls in the novel have to education beyond elementary school.
• This information connects to the novel’s themes of Education: School and Beyond and Men, Women, and Power.
• How does the patriarchal society in the neighborhood enforce systems of oppression against women? How do gender expectations prevent characters like Lila from pursuing opportunity in the novel?

“Alcott: ‘Not the Little Woman You Thought She Was’”

• This article from NPR analyzes the historical truth of Louisa May Alcott’s life and how she embellished her experiences in fiction.
• In My Brilliant Friend, Little Women symbolizes female authorship and the possibility for escape through writing. As another bildungsroman centering female relationships, the allusion to Little Women in the text provokes many comparisons with the story of Elena and Lila.
• The context surrounding Alcott’s life and details altered in her novel can be used to prompt students to consider questions about authorship and claiming power over one’s narrative.
• The content of the article offers connections to the themes of Money and Promotion and Men, Women, and Power.
• What similarities do you see between Louisa May Alcott’s life and that of Elena and Lila in their impoverished neighborhood? How do Elena and Lila view writing as a means of escape? How does changing the details of her story allow Alcott to reclaim a kind of power or authorship over her experience? How might Elena the narrator be doing the same in her chronicling of her and Lila’s friendship?

PART 2, CHAPTERS 1-22

Reading Check

1. What does Elena call the peculiar episodes Lila has in which “the outlines of people and things suddenly dissolved, disappeared?” (Part 2, Chapter 1)

2. To what political party do Pasquale and his father belong?

3. Which new language does Elena study at high school that Lila feels obligated to surpass her in?

4. What do the Solaras shoot off during the fireworks competition once they run out of fireworks?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does Elena feel that she has distinguished herself from other girls like Carmela and Gigliola when it comes to friendship with Lila?

2. How does Elena’s perception of Lila’s character change after Lila embarrasses Elena publicly with her knowledge of the gramophone?

3. Why is Lila so interested in the “before” time, as she calls the period of time before she and Elena were born?

4. How does Lila react to the fireworks standoff between the Solaras and Stefano and Rino’s group?

Paired Resource

How Bespoke Italian Leather Shoes Are Made

• In this 6-minute video, Florence-based shoemaker Saskia Wittmer illustrates the process of making shoes by hand. She discusses the challenges she faces as a woman in a traditionally masculine occupation.
• This information connects to the themes of Money and Promotion and Men, Women, and Power.
• How does Lila see the shoes as a tool toward change? How do the shoes function as a symbol of female creative power? How do they allow Lila to challenge power structures as she works in a traditionally masculine sphere? How do those same power structures prevent her from fully realizing her vision and receiving recognition for it?

Why Should You Read Virgil’s Aeneid?

• This 6-minute video from TED-Ed provides a brief summary of The Aeneid and its key figures in addition to historical and mythological context surrounding its conception.
• This resource connects to the theme of Men, Women, and Power.
• What similarities do you see between the political climate of Rome during the time of the writing of the Aeneid and the political climate of the Naples and the neighborhood during the post-war period? How is Lila like Aeneas, fighting for her vision of a renewed future for the people of the neighborhood?

“How a Right-Wing Party of Neo-Fascist Roots Became Poised to Lead Italy”

• This PBS article from 2022 examines current events in Italy and their roots in the rise of fascism in Italy during the Mussolini era and beyond. This resource offers context on fascism’s influence in Italy and its connection to Italy’s current political environment.
• The information in this resource connects to the theme of Men, Women, and Power.
• How does the political context surrounding the fascist-communist conflict provide a backdrop for the violence of the neighborhood? How does Lila see these ideological frameworks as potential vehicles through which she can seek recourse for all the chaos and harm in the neighborhood’s violent reality?

PART 2, CHAPTERS 23-43

Reading Check

1. What does Rino leave for his father from “la Befana”?

2. From which surprising boy does Lila receive a love confession that to Elena seems like a “promotion”?

3. What luxurious piece of new technology does Lila’s suitor gift to the Cerullo family?

4. To whom does Lila become engaged?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does Lila change following the fireworks incident and her father’s discovery of her and Rino’s secret project?

2. Why does Elena feel that she has become listless in her studies without Lila’s influence?

3. How do Elena’s and Lila’s ideas about wealth change over the first half of Part 2?

4. What “pattern” does Elena begin to see in her relationship with Lila that, according to Elena, binds their fates together?

Paired Resource

“A Power of Our Own” by Elena Ferrante (translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein)

• In this opinion piece for the New York Times, Elena Ferrante examines the nature of power and gender dynamics and explores storytelling as a mode of subverting traditional structures of power. This resource will help students analyze the role of education and writing as tools for the characters to challenge power structures in the novel. (Article may require subscription to view.)
• The content explored here connects to the themes of Education: School and Beyond and Men, Women, and Power.
• What kinds of power dynamics are present in the novel between disparate genders and social classes? In what ways do Elena and Lila embrace or reject the masculine modes of conflict resolution in the novel? How do Elena and Lila use storytelling as power instead? In what ways do they attempt to regain power or control over their destinies despite the expectations placed upon them as women?

PART 2, CHAPTERS 44-62

Reading Check

1. Why does Lila say that she doesn’t want to read anything else that Elena writes?

2. Which two “sorrows” does Lila experience that deeply wound her before her wedding?

3. Who is the titular “my brilliant friend”? (Part 2, Chapter 57)

4. Which shocking item of clothing does Marcello wear to Lila’s wedding?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does Lila change as a result of her engagement to Stefano?

2. Why is Elena so surprised by the way that Lila and Stefano choose to react to the rumors that Marcello Solara spreads about Lila?

3. What is the likely reason why Nino does not publish Elena’s article?

4. Who does Elena conclude are the “plebs”? 

Recommended Next Reads 

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

• The second installment of the Neapolitan Quartet documents the young adulthood of Elena and Lila. The intense bond between the two women remains a focal point of their lives as both navigate a patriarchal world and search for personal and romantic fulfillment.  
• Shared themes include Money and Promotion, Education: School and Beyond, and Men, Women, and Power.    
• Shared topics include the power of language and writing, growing up, maturity, confronting patriarchal systems of oppression, and sexual growth and exploration.      
• The Story of a New Name on SuperSummary

Ponti by Sharlene Teo

• Set in Singapore, this novel chronicles the friendship between characters Szu and Circe from adolescence to middle adulthood. The novel splits narration between two time periods to explore the potent, enduring bond between Szu and Circe.
• Shared topics include female friendships and coming of age.