"Giovanna's pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father clearly despise? Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is. Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that...

Beginning in the 1950s Elena and Lila grow up in Naples, Italy, mirroring two different aspects of their nation.

Overview: The second book, following last year's My Brilliant Friend, featuring the two friends Lila and Elena. The two protagonists are now in their twenties. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila. Meanwhile, Elena continues her journey of self-discovery. The two young women share a complex and evolving bond that brings them close at times, and drives them apart at others. Each vacillates between hurtful disregard and profound love for the other....

Friends Elena and Lila have become women. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her husband and now works as a common laborer. Elena left the neighborhood, earned her college degree, and has published a successful novel. Both women are pushing against the walls of a prison that would have seen them living a life of misery, ignorance, and submission. Afloat on the sea of opportunities that opened up during the 1970s, they are still...

Nápoles, en la actualidad: cuando la joven Giovanna insiste en conocer a la hermana de su padre, personaje misteriosamente borrado de las conversaciones y fotografías familiares, desencadena sin saberlo el desmoronamiento de su familia intelectual y burguesa, perfecta solo en apariencia. Una historia sobre el descubrimiento de las mentiras de los adultos, del amor y del sexo. Italian teenager Giovanna searches for a sense of identity and clear...