Sometimes we hurt the ones we love. Why do we do it? Elena Ferrante’s novel, My Brilliant Friend, suggests it is our own feelings of inadequacy. Through Lila and Lenù, two lifelong friends, Ferrante weaves her scenes of having and having not—and our inevitable human reaction.

The story opens with the premise that Lila has disappeared—in fact, erased every trace of herself—and Lenù sets out to write their story in part to spite Lila:

“She wanted not only to disappear herself, now, at the age of sixty-six, but also to eliminate the entire life that she had left behind.

I was really angry.

We’ll see who wins this time, I said to myself. I turned on the computer and began to write—all the details of our story, everything that still remained in my memory.”

With that we are thrust into their childhood in Naples where their friendship was formed. The story, the first of four books, seems to reiterate this battle between the two friends—and yet, though they fight, they are inextricably drawn together as friends.

Through it all, Ferrante speaks in a clear, commanding voice that reminded me of my own youth. And yet this was not my youth. This was Naples in the 50s and 60s, a world populated with mysterious, mafia-esque undertones and hotheaded young men who will fight to retain their honor and the honor of those they love. It’s a mostly poor neighborhood where children are not expected to study after elementary school.

Through it all the two girls struggle to live with what they have and what they noticeably have not. They struggle to help each other and their loved ones stay out of trouble and improve their lot in life. Fate isn’t, however, always kind. And Ferrante paints vivid portraits of her characters that feel intensely human and therefore vulnerable.

Seeing myself in both Lenù and Lila, the characters overwhelmed me. Though I have never set foot in Naples, the childhood reflected in this novel spoke to me of so much of mine, through the jealousy, the desire to succeed, to be liked—even the desire to hurt the ones you love because you cannot experience the same joy, so you must diminish it. For me, the novel asks if we have left that all behind.