that this was an ambivalent attempt to get Elena's parents to withdraw their support for her education. Elena forgives Lila, knowing how hard it is for Lila to be left behind while she moves forward. Elena attends middle school and eventually high school. With Elena studying, Lila occupies herself with her father's shoe shop. Much to his irritation, she dreams of designing new types of shoes to make them rich. She also grows very beautiful, attracting most of the neighborhood's young men, including Marcello Solara, the young son of the powerful local Camorra leader. Despite being pressured by her family to marry Marcello, Lila resists because she considers the Solaras to be fundamentally evil. To escape Marcello, she accepts Stefano Carracci, the son of the loan shark and owner of the local grocery, when he asks her to marry him. Stefano seems to appreciate Lila's originality, by buying a pair of shoes she made that are her original design, and thus convincing her father that her ideas are valuable. Lila and Stefano marry when she is sixteen, throwing a large party to which they invite the whole neighborhood. The party is the climax of the novel. There Lenù reflects on the way professor Olivero used to speak about the people of the neighborhood as "pleebs":At that moment I knew what the plebs were, much more clearly than when, years earlier, she had asked me. The plebs were us. The plebs were that fight for food and wine, that quarrel over who should be served first and better, that dirty floor on which the waiters clattered back and forth, those increasingly vulgar toasts. The plebs were my mother, who had drunk wine and now was leaning against my father’s shoulder, while he, serious, laughed, his mouth gaping, at the sexual allusions of the metal dealer. They were all laughing, even Lila, with the expression of one who has a role and will play it to the utmost.The novel ends with the arrival of Marcello Solara, who was invited against Lila's will, and arrives wearing the shoes that she had made and that Stefano bought. This pivotal moment shows Lila and Lenù that Stefano was actually no different from Marcello. Main characters Elena Greco (also known as Lenù or Lenuccia), the narrator and main character of the novel. She is the first born child of the Greco family, and has three young