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Lila is repulsed by Solara’s animalistic brutality and does everything in her power to get him out of her life. However, being the prized girl in the neighborhood has its negative side: Lila’s impoverished family pushes her into an engagement with the loathsome but high-status Marcello Solara. Elena notices how the “men kept their eyes on as if we others had disappeared” (143). Elena hits puberty first and experiences it as an awkward state, while Lila, though a late bloomer, appears to make a graceful and stunning transition into womanhood. This record sets Elena on a course of further schooling, while Lila engages herself in making the perfect men’s shoe for her father’s shop and borrows as many books as she can from the local library to keep pace with Elena. Elena considers Lila to be the more clever and daring one however, in the final elementary school exam, Lila does not live up to her potential, whereas Elena is outstanding.

The girls develop a dynamic based on mutual respect and competition. The body of the novel tells that story in two parts, beginning in an impoverished neighborhood in 1950s Naples where Lila and Elena are the best students in Maestra Oliviero’s class.