Lenuccia "Elena" Greco Airota

Elena is the first-person narrator of the entire Neapolitan series. Her main character arc is a struggle with importance and self worth. Throughout the narrative, this personality issue is at times tied to Lila, and at times a product of her own low self-esteem. Because of her strange feelings both for and against Lila, she is not a reliable narrator. However, her view of Lila is all the reader has.

As a person, Elena is a brilliant writer and an intellectual. At the beginning of this novel, she is a successful published novelist, and the bulk of the narrative deals with her need to create something significant and lasting. It is difficult for her to conceptualize herself outside of this accomplishment. The reader also begins to see in this installment that Elena is an egoist--she is chiefly concerned with how things affect her. For example...