The present work intends to investigate the notion of objet petit a – as forged by Lacan in his 10th Seminar, The anguish – in the light of some passages and narrative elements extracted from the tetralogy My brilliant friend, by Elena Ferrante. The hypothesis of this investigation is that the study of the double role of the objet petit a, between triggering anguish and causing desire, can benefit from the use of Ferrantean fiction. From this perspective, initially, we covered the forays of Freud and Lacan into the rapprochement between art and psychoanalysis, in order to define a method to link the two fields. Furthermore, we present the writer Elena Ferrante, highlighting unique aspects of her literary work, as well as the main coordinates of her Neapolitan tetralogy. Then, after introducing the notion of objet petit a, its anguishing facet is addressed in connection with the body, based on a phenomenon that affects one of the characters in the novel, the smarginatura. Finally, the examination of the nuances present in the friendship narrated by Ferrante allows us to discuss the objet petit a function of causing desire, thus displacing the smarginatura from its initial meaning.