A current running through the very center of our lives springs from a gemstone of light formed in childhood. That gemstone may grow dim, but it never disappears. It is a star that illuminates our faces until the day our lives come to an end. It may be a small memory, a wound darkened by time, or even a pair of shoes.
Lila and Lenù, the two central figures of My Brilliant Friend, are like two stars orbiting each other, simultaneously opposites and points of reference. Lenù is the promising model student and gifted thinker; Lila is the girl who spills ink across the classroom and draws beautiful designs for shoes. Fierce as a wildcat, Lila is also a thinker who seems to transcend her surroundings. In the poverty-stricken Naples of the 1950s, their friendship is overwhelming in its intensity. And amid it all, Lila's shoes shine.
From the moment the author names the book's longest section “The Story of the Shoes,” those shoes become a motif running through the novel. As the daughter of a shoemaker, Lila expresses in her designs both her desire to escape poverty and the world she inhabited, or perhaps created, as a child. The sketch she one day shows Lenù can be understood as a symbol of her innocent dream. Born at the intersection of her longing to escape the deprivation of Naples and her unblemished childhood creativity, the shoes are her inner light taking shape in the physical world.
Lila could hardly have anticipated that her drawing would become the source of so many forms of evil. Together with her brother Rino, and without their father's knowledge, she begins making the shoes. Because they embody the very essence of her creativity, she is mercilessly demanding. We cannot know how much she asked of Rino before he began hurling insults and curses at the sister he loved. Her desire to realize her dream revealed something of her own violent instincts and eventually exposed Rino's violence as well. The same pattern emerges when Rino proudly shows the shoes to their father at New Year, babbling without noticing his father's barely contained fury, until the confrontation erupts into a physical fight between father and son. All these events culminate in Rino's obsession with the shoes and his oppression of Lila. The once gentle and considerate Rino vanishes, leaving behind a savage shoemaker who shouts at his sister and strikes her across the face.
From this point onward, the source of Lila's light seems to lose its brilliance. Tainted by evil and violence, it loses its innocence. One sign is the scene in which Lila quietly caresses the finished shoes when nobody else is home. It began as nothing more than a sketch, nothing more than an innocent wish to make a small dream real. That it should become the origin of such unresolved violence is almost unbearably tragic. The corruption of Lila's dream, as its light fades and evil emerges, reaches its climax in the novel's final chapter.
In Naples, swallowed by poverty, only the Solara brothers can afford a new car and fireworks that continue until daybreak. They are also the only ones willing to fire guns to win a fireworks contest. On the last pages of the book, at her wedding, Lila fixes her characteristic narrowed, murderous gaze on Marcello Solara's feet. On those feet are the shoes that once embodied her childhood dream and light. They belong to the very Solara she despises, the man at whose throat she once held a small knife.
Here the light is completely obscured. The shoes, already dimmed by the violence surrounding their creation, lose their final glimmer when they become Solara's property. The dream of shoes that belonged wholly to Lila disappears. Something in Lila herself is damaged as well, for her dream is now being worn on someone else's feet.
The gemstone of light must belong to me alone. It must never be surrendered to another, for once it ceases to be mine, it loses its radiance. Of course, I doubt that Lila's light has been extinguished altogether. One day it may shine again in her life. One day she may set out to find it. So must I. I must search for my lost gemstone. Even when its light cannot be seen, I must long for the old innocence in the hope that it will shine again. I must follow the traces of light formed when everything was still unspoiled. To be frank, I do not know where the source of my own light lies. I have few memories of childhood, and even fewer happy ones. I do not know where the current running through my life began, or where it will begin to take shape. Perhaps I am still in the middle of that process. Perhaps the light within me is only now forming. Am I not still young enough? There is time. I am watching the gemstone of light grow. I have no particular desire to force myself to discover what it is. I only hope that, when I someday encounter the light I had forgotten, my eyes will shine with joy and wonder. I called it the star that illuminates our faces until the end of our lives. The purest star is always near us. At some point in life, therefore, our task must be to find the light. Do not let the current of your life run dry. Find Lila's shoes. They will lead you toward the light and guide you through your darkest hour.