So is the unawareness of the adults who are all oblivious of the adverse traumatizing experiences of their community. The trauma or desensitization of all the children in Lenú’s neighborhood is clear from the beginning. It doesn’t matter that they all hate the Solaras, they all want or need the Solaras money and influence to survive. Then we have all those willing to do anything to be associated with the rich Solaras, if only as a way to escape poverty. Enter the Solaras who are willing to do anything to keep their position and money – even murder and frame an innocent man for the murder. Of course, as in all poverty-stricken communities we have the richest of the poor and the poorest of the poor. It could be Kilifi in Kenya, Turkana, Igembe – it could be so many places in the world. The girls start looking out for potential husbands before they reach puberty. In this community, no one expects the girls to be educated beyond elementary school, not even their own parents. I think to myself “of all the things she can imagine in her madness, why would she imagine that? Why doesn’t she imagine it with someone else?” Taking time to think about Melina brings Lila into the frame quite fast because Lila empathizes with Melina. Everyone thinks she is imagining an intimate relationship with the poet Sarratore senior. The first thing to catch my attention is Melina’s madness. So, I went to the library and borrowed the 2nd book The Story of a New Name. I wondered if Lenú would become a brilliant scholar, teacher, lecturer or just marry and be done with it. A couple of weeks later, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lila in her new marriage.

So I finished the first book My Brilliant Friend and thought I was done.

Thank heavens that I am not one to leave a book half-read, or a sentence half-said. The sun had painted Lenú’s skin with dark gold.

I almost annoyed myself into stopping reading the Neapolitan series because in the first book My Brilliant Friend Lenú’s siblings said: “You look like a negro” with a certain ‘contempt’ when Lenu came back from Ischia. This neighborhood could be anywhere in the world, even in Nairobi. The Neapolitan books are set somewhere in Italy, a poor neighborhood in Naples where violence and strife are so normalized everyone is conditioned to either not react to it or react with more violence.