1. How do you understand Lila's choice of Stefano? How is this choice complicated by the fact that there are other young men in the picture that like Lila? What are her feelings about them? How does power come into it?
2. Lenù has mixed feelings about Nino and Antonio. How do you understand her choice? What effect does the encounter with Donato have on her? How does power come into it?
3. Describe some of the male characters, their battles with each other and their attempts to control their own destinies and those of their families and their neighborhood. How do they attempt to resolve their problems?
How does power come into it?
6. Reread the rest of chapter 57, which follows the above quote in which Lila tells Lenù she must continue to study and be "brilliant." How do you understand Lenù's feelings about her friend and the important step she is about to take? How does this relate to some of the decisions Lenù makes?
7. Discuss the various reasons for people's feelings at the wedding and what this tells us about the characters and their lives. How does power come into the ways the characters interact at the wedding?
8. On page 329 (in the middle of chapter 62 for those of you who hae the electronic edition), Lenù recalls Maestra Oliviero speaking about what she called the "plebs." What is the significance of this for Lenù at this point in the story? How does power come into this?
9. Analyze the very last paragraph of the novel. What is the significance of ending this way? How does power come into this?
10. What do you imagine for Lila and Lenù in the upcoming novels? (Remember this is only the first of four novels.) What do you imagine the power dynamics in their lives and in their friendship will be given all that has occurred up to now?