The Story of the Lost Child: A Novel (Neapolitan Novels, 4) by Elena Ferrante
Read sample
Customer reviews

The Story of the Lost Child: A Novel (Neapolitan Novels, 4)

by

Elena Ferrante

(Author)

4.5

-

25,217 ratings


The “stunning conclusion” to the bestselling saga of the fierce lifelong bond between two women, from a gritty Naples childhood through old age (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

One of the New York Times​’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

The Story of the Lost Child concludes the dazzling saga of two women, the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila, who first met amid the shambles of postwar Italy. In this book, life’s great discoveries have been made; its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women’s friendship remains the gravitational center of their lives.

Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. But now, she has returned to Naples to be with the man she has always loved. Lila, on the other hand, never succeeded in freeing herself from Naples. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect her neighborhood. Yet, somehow, this proximity to a world she has always rejected only brings her role as unacknowledged leader of that world into relief.

“Lila is a magnificent character.” —The Atlantic

“Everyone should read anything with Ferrante’s name on it.” —The Boston Globe

Kindle

$9.99

Available instantly

Audiobook

$0.00

with membership trial

Hardcover

$37.45

Paperback

$11.49

Buy Now

Ships from

Amazon.com

Payment

Secure transaction

ISBN-10

1609452860

ISBN-13

978-1609452865

Print length

480 pages

Language

English

Publisher

Europa Editions

Publication date

August 31, 2015

Dimensions

5.29 x 1.4 x 8.25 inches

Item weight

2.31 pounds


Popular Highlights in this book

  • Unlike stories, real life, when it has passed, inclines toward obscurity, not clarity.

    Highlighted by 1,217 Kindle readers

  • In what disorder we lived, how many fragments of ourselves were scattered, as if to live were to explode into splinters.

    Highlighted by 808 Kindle readers

  • In the wealthier countries a mediocrity that hides the horrors of the rest of the world has prevailed.

    Highlighted by 806 Kindle readers


Product details

ASIN :

B079MHR4RT

File size :

5028 KB

Text-to-speech :

Enabled

Screen reader :

Supported

Enhanced typesetting :

Enabled

X-Ray :

Enabled

Word wise :

Enabled


Editorial Reviews

''In Ferrante's fourth and final Neapolitan novel, she reunites Elena, the accomplished writer, with Lila, the indomitable spirit, in their Southern Italian city as they confront maturity and old age, death, and the meaning of life . . . This stunning conclusion further solidifies the Neapolitan novels as Ferrante's masterpiece and guarantees that this reclusive author will remain far from obscure for years to come.'' --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

''Inexorable seismic changes -- in society and in the lives of two female friends -- mark the final volume of Ferrante's Neapolitan series . . . The enigmatic Ferrante, whose identity remains the subject of international literary gossip, has created a mythic portrait of a female friendship in the chthonian world of postwar Naples.'' --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

''Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels . . . tell a single story with the possessive force of an origin myth.'' --Vogue, praise for the series

''Elena Ferrante is one of the great novelists of our time.'' --New York Times Book Review, praise for the author


Sample

MATURITY

1.

From October 1976 until 1979, when I returned to Naples to live, I avoided resuming a steady relationship with Lila. But it wasn’t easy. She almost immediately tried to reenter my life by force, and I ignored her, tolerated her, endured her. Even if she acted as if there were nothing she wanted more than to be close to me at a difficult moment, I couldn’t forget the contempt with which she had treated me.

Today I think that if it had been only the insult that wounded me—You’re an idiot, she had shouted on the telephone when I told her about Nino, and she had never, ever spoken to me like that before—I would have soon calmed down. In reality, what mattered more than that offense was the mention of Dede and Elsa. Think of the harm you’re doing to your daughters, she had warned me, and at the moment I had paid no attention. But over time those words acquired greater weight, and I returned to them often. Lila had never displayed the slightest interest in Dede and Elsa; almost certainly she didn’t even remember their names. If, on the phone, I mentioned some intelligent remark they had made, she cut me off, changed the subject. And when she met them for the first time, at the house of Marcello Solara, she had confined herself to an absentminded glance and a few pat phrases—she hadn’t paid the least attention to how nicely they were dressed, how neatly their hair was combed, how well both were able to express themselves, although they were still small. And yet I had given birth to them, I had brought them up, they were part of me, who had been her friend forever: she should have taken this into account—I won’t say out of affection but at least out of politeness—for my maternal pride. Yet she hadn’t even attempted a little good-natured sarcasm; she had displayed indifference and nothing more. Only now—out of jealousy, surely, because I had taken Nino—did she remember the girls, and wanted to emphasize that I was a terrible mother, that although I was happy, I was causing them unhappiness. The minute I thought about it I became anxious. Had Lila worried about Gennaro when she left Stefano, when she abandoned the child to the neighbor because of her work in the factory, when she sent him to me as if to get him out of the way? Ah, I had my faults, but I was certainly more a mother than she was.

2.

Such thoughts became a habit in those years. It was as if Lila, who, after all, had uttered only that one malicious remark about Dede and Elsa, had become the defense lawyer for their needs as daughters, and, every time I neglected them to devote myself to myself, I felt obliged to prove to her that she was wrong. But it was a voice invented by ill feeling; what she really thought of my behavior as a mother I don’t know. Only she can say if, in fact, she has managed to insert herself into this extremely long chain of words to modify my text, to purposely supply the missing links, to unhook others without letting it show, to say of me more than I want, more than I’m able to say. I wish for this intrusion, I’ve hoped for it ever since I began to write our story, but I have to get to the end in order to check all the pages. If I tried now, I would certainly get stuck. I’ve been writing for too long, and I’m tired; it’s more and more difficult to keep the thread of the story taut within the chaos of the years, of events large and small, of moods. So either I tend to pass over my own affairs to recapture Lila and all the complications she brings with her or, worse, I let myself be carried away by the events of my life, only because it’s easier to write them. But I have to avoid this choice. I mustn’t take the first path, on which, if I set myself aside, I would end up finding ever fewer traces of Lila—since the very nature of our relationship dictates that I can reach her only by passing through myself. But I shouldn’t take the second, either. That, in fact, I speak of my experience in increasingly greater detail is just what she would certainly favor. Come on—she would say—tell us what turn your life took, who cares about mine, admit that it doesn’t even interest you. And she would conclude: I’m a scribble on a scribble, completely unsuitable for one of your books; forget it, Lenù, one doesn’t tell the story of an erasure.

What to do, then? Admit yet again that she’s right? Accept that to be adult is to disappear, is to learn to hide to the point of vanishing? Admit that, as the years pass, the less I know of Lila?

This morning I keep weariness at bay and sit down again at the desk. Now that I’m close to the most painful part of our story, I want to seek on the page a balance between her and me that in life I couldn’t find even between myself and me.

3.

Of the days in Montpellier I remember everything except the city; it’s as if I’d never been there. Outside the hotel, outside the vast assembly hall where the academic conference that Nino was attending took place, today I see only a windy autumn and a blue sky resting on white clouds. And yet in my memory that place-name, Montpellier, has for many reasons remained a symbol of escape. I had been out of Italy once, in Paris, with Franco, and I had felt exhilarated by my own audacity. But then it seemed to me that my world was and would forever remain the neighborhood, Naples, while the rest was like a brief outing in whose special climate I could imagine myself as I would never in fact be. Montpellier, on the other hand, although it was far less exciting than Paris, gave me the impression that my boundaries had burst and I was expanding. The pure and simple fact of being in that place constituted in my eyes the proof that the neighborhood, Naples, Pisa, Florence, Milan, Italy itself were only tiny fragments of the world and that I would do well not to be satisfied with those fragments any longer. In Montpellier I felt the limitations of my outlook, of the language in which I expressed myself and in which I had written. In Montpellier it seemed to me evident how restrictive, at thirty-two, being a wife and mother might be. And in all those days charged with love I felt, for the first time, freed from the chains I had accumulated over the years—those of my origins, those I had acquired through academic success, those derived from the choices I had made in life, especially marriage. There I also understood the reasons for the pleasure I had felt, in the past, on seeing my first book translated into other languages and, at the same time, the reasons for my disappointment at finding few readers outside Italy. It was marvelous to cross borders, to let oneself go within other cultures, discover the provisional nature of what I had taken for absolute. The fact that Lila had never been out of Naples, that she was afraid even of San Giovanni a Teduccio—if in the past I had judged it an arguable choice that she was nevertheless able, as usual, to turn into an advantage—now seemed to me simply a sign of mental limitation. I reacted the way you do to someone who insults you by using the same formulations that offended you. You were wrong about me? No, my dear, it’s I, I who was wrong about you: you will spend the rest of your life looking out at the trucks passing on the stradone.

The days flew by. The organizers of the conference had reserved for Nino a single room in the hotel, and since I had decided so late to go with him, there was no way to change it to a double. So we had separate rooms, but every night I took a shower, got ready for bed, and then, with trepidation, went to his room. We slept together, clinging to each other, as if we feared that a hostile force would separate us in sleep. In the morning we had breakfast in bed, a luxury that I had seen only in movies; we laughed, we were happy. During the day I went with him to the assembly hall and, although the speakers read their endless pages in a bored tone, being with him was exciting; I sat next to him but without disturbing him. Nino followed the talks attentively, took notes, and every so often whispered in my ear ironic comments and words of love. At lunch and dinner we mixed with academics from all over the world, foreign names, foreign languages. Of course, the participants with bigger reputations were at a table of their own; we sat in a large group of younger scholars. But I was struck by Nino’s mobility, both during the events and at the restaurants. How different he was from the student of long ago, even from the youth who had defended me in the bookstore in Milan almost ten years earlier. He had abandoned polemical tones, he tactfully crossed academic barriers, established relations with a serious yet engaging demeanor. Now in English (excellent), now in French (good), he conversed brilliantly, displaying his old devotion to figures and efficiency. I was filled with pride at how well liked he was. In a few hours he had charmed everyone, and was invited here and there.

There was a single moment when he changed abruptly. The evening before he was to speak at the conference, he became aloof and rude; he seemed overwhelmed by anxiety. He began to disparage the text he had prepared, he kept repeating that writing for him wasn’t as easy as it was for me, he became angry because he hadn’t had time to work well. I felt guilty—was it our complicated affair that had distracted him?—and tried to help, hugging him, kissing him, urging him to read me the pages. He did read them, with the air of a frightened schoolboy, which touched me. To me the speech seemed as dull as the ones I had heard in the assembly hall, but I praised it and he calmed down. The next morning he performed with practiced warmth and was applauded. That evening one of the big-name academics, an American, invited him to sit with him. I was left alone, but I wasn’t sorry. When Nino was there, I didn’t talk to anyone, while in his absence I was forced to manage with my halting French, and I became friendly with a couple from Paris. I liked them because I quickly discovered that they were in a situation not very different from ours. Both considered the institution of the family suffocating, both had painfully left spouses and children, both seemed happy. He, Augustin, was around fifty, with a ruddy face, lively blue eyes, a bushy pale-blond mustache. She, Colombe, was a little over thirty, like me; she had very short black hair, eyes and lips drawn sharply on a tiny face, a charming elegance. I talked mainly to Colombe, who had a child of seven.

“In a few months,” I said, “my older daughter will turn seven, but she’s going into second grade this year—she’s very bright.”

“My son is extremely clever and imaginative.”

“How did he take the separation?”

“Fine.”

“He didn’t get even a little upset?”

“Children aren’t rigid, the way we are: they’re flexible.”

She dwelled on the flexibility she ascribed to childhood; it seemed to reassure her. She added: in our world it’s fairly common for parents to separate, and children know it’s possible. But just as I was saying that I didn’t know other separated women, apart from one friend, her tone changed abruptly and she began to complain about the child: he’s smart but slow, she exclaimed, at school they say he’s unruly. I was struck by the change; she expressed herself without tenderness, almost bitterly, as if her son were behaving like that to spite her, and this made me anxious. Her companion must have noticed, and he interrupted, boasting about his two boys, fourteen and eighteen, and joking about how attractive they were to women, both old and young. When Nino returned, the two men—especially Augustin—began to criticize the speakers. Colombe joined in almost immediately, with a slightly artificial gaiety. The maliciousness soon created a bond. Augustin talked and drank a lot all evening, his companion laughed whenever Nino managed to say a word. They invited us to drive to Paris with them, in their car.

The conversation about children, and that invitation that we didn’t say yes or no to, brought me back to reality. Until that moment Dede and Elsa, and also Pietro, had been on my mind constantly, but as if suspended in a parallel universe, motionless around the kitchen table in Florence, or in front of the television, or in their beds. Suddenly my world and theirs were back in communication. I realized that the days in Montpellier were about to end, that inevitably Nino and I would return to our homes, that we would have to face our respective marital crises, I in Florence, he in Naples. And the children’s bodies rejoined mine, I felt the contact violently. I had no news of them for five days, and as I became aware of that I felt an intense nausea, an unbearable longing for them. I was afraid not of the future in general, which now seemed inescapably occupied by Nino, but of the hours that were about to come, of tomorrow, of the day after. I couldn’t resist and although it was almost midnight—what’s the difference, I said to myself, Pietro is always awake—I tried to telephone.

It was fairly laborious, but finally the call went through. Hello, I said. Hello, I repeated. I knew that Pietro was at the other end of the line, I called him by name: Pietro, it’s Elena, how are the girls. The connection was cut off. I waited a few minutes, then I asked the operator to call again. I was determined to continue all night, but this time Pietro answered.

“What do you want?”

“Tell me about the children.”

“They’re sleeping.”

“I know, but how are they?”

“What is it to you.”

“They’re my children.”

“You left them, they don’t want to be your children anymore.”

“They told you?”

“They told my mother.”

“You had Adele come?”

“Yes.”

“Tell them I’ll be home in a few days.”

“No, don’t come back. Neither I, nor the children, nor my mother wants to see you again.”

4.

I had a cry, then I calmed down and went to Nino. I wanted to tell him about that phone call, I wanted him to console me. But as I was about to knock on his door I heard him talking to someone. I hesitated. He was on the phone. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, or even what language he was speaking, but right away I thought that he was talking to his wife. So did this happen every evening? When I went to my room to get ready for the night and he was alone, he telephoned Eleonora? Were they looking for a way to separate without fighting? Or were they reconciling and, once the interlude of Montpellier was over, she would take him back?

I decided to knock. Nino broke off, silence, then he began talking again but lowered his voice. I became nervous, I knocked again, nothing happened. I had to knock a third time, hard, before he came to the door. I immediately confronted him, I accused him of hiding me from his wife, I cried that I had telephoned Pietro, that my husband didn’t want to let me see my children, that I was calling into question my entire life, while he was cooing on the telephone with Eleonora. It was a terrible night of quarreling; we struggled to make up. Nino tried everything to soothe me: he laughed nervously, he got angry at Pietro for the way he had treated me, he kissed me, I pushed him away, he said I was crazy. But no matter how I pressed him he never admitted that he was talking to his wife, in fact he swore on his son that since the day he left Naples he hadn’t talked to her.

“Then who were you calling?”

“A colleague here in the hotel.”

“At midnight?”

“At midnight.”

“Liar.”

“It’s the truth.”

I refused for a long time to make love, I couldn’t, I was afraid that he no longer loved me. Then I yielded, in order not to have to believe that it was all already over.

The next morning, for the first time in almost five days of living together, I woke in a bad mood. We had to leave, the conference was nearly over. But I didn’t want Montpellier to be merely an interlude; I was afraid to go home, afraid that Nino would go home, afraid of losing my children forever. When Augustin and Colombe again suggested that we drive to Paris with them, and even offered to put us up, I turned to Nino, hoping that he, too, wanted nothing more than the chance to extend this time, put off the return. But he shook his head sadly, he said: Impossible, we have to go back to Italy, and he talked about flights, tickets, trains, money. I was fragile, I felt disappointment and rancor. I was right, I thought, he lied to me, the break with his wife isn’t conclusive. He had talked to her every night, he had pledged to return home after the conference, he couldn’t delay even a couple of days. And me?

I remembered the publisher in Nanterre and my short, scholarly story about the male invention of woman. Until that moment I hadn’t talked about myself to anyone, even Nino. I had been the smiling but nearly mute woman who slept with the brilliant professor from Naples, the woman always pasted to him, attentive to his needs, to his thoughts. But now I said with false cheer: It’s Nino who has to return, I have an engagement in Nanterre; a work of mine is about to come out—or maybe it’s already out—a half essay, half story; I just might leave with you, and stop in at the publisher’s. The two looked at me as if only at that moment had I actually begun to exist, and they went on to ask me about my work. I told them, and it turned out that Colombe knew well the woman who was the head of the small but—as I discovered at that moment—prestigious publishing house. I let myself go, I talked with too much vivacity and maybe I exaggerated a little about my literary career. I did it not for the two French people but, rather, for Nino. I wanted to remind him that I had a rewarding life of my own, that if I had been capable of leaving my children and Pietro, then I could also do without him, and not in a week, not in ten days: immediately.

He listened, then he said seriously to Colombe and Augustin: All right, if it’s not a bother for you we’ll take advantage of the ride. But when we were alone he made me a speech anxious in tone and passionate in content, whose sense was that I should trust him, that although our situation was complicated we would surely untangle it, that to do so, however, we had to go home, we couldn’t flee from Montpellier to Paris and then to who knows what other city, we had to confront our spouses and begin our life together. Suddenly I felt that he was not only reasonable but sincere. I was confused, I embraced him, I murmured agreement. And yet we left for Paris; I wanted just a few more days.

Read more


About the authors

Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante is the author of seven novels, including four New York Times bestsellers; The Beach at Night, an illustrated book for children; and, Frantumaglia, a collection of letters, literary essays, and interviews. Her fiction has been translated into over forty languages and been shortlisted for the MAN Booker International Prize. In 2016 she was named one of TIME’s most influential people of the year and the New York Times has described her as “one of the great novelists of our time.” Ferrante was born in Naples.

Read more


Reviews

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

25,217 global ratings

Swapna Rajagopal

Swapna Rajagopal

5

Love these books and the characters

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2022

Verified Purchase

I got hooked on the show, and the third season left at such a cliffhanger that I couldn't wait. I devoured all four books in less than a month!! So good. I have to say the show is pretty faithful to the books, but the writing, my God!!! Every character is so rich and layered, they really jump out of the pages.

The friendship between Elena and Lila is so beautiful and so real. Elena, always insecure, doubting herself, and always needing that extra nudge from Lila. And Lila, being the headstrong woman she is, never once doubting herself, always throwing her stock behind her best friend. They are like two sides of the same coin.

In her casual, engaging style, Ferante takes us through the history of Italy over almost six decades, giving us a view of Italy that we seldom get. It is an incredible feat. She also gives us a look into the joys and tedium of motherhood that most don't talk about. The juxtapositon of joy and guilt when Elena gets to follow her dreams is so beautifully described.

Now that I'm done, I'm going to miss these strong incredible women and strangely even Naples!

Read more

2 people found this helpful

Mary Owens

Mary Owens

5

A brilliant conclusion to an indelible series of novels

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2016

Verified Purchase

I was so captivated by the Neapolitan novels that I read all 4 in about 3 weeks. They are psychologically more raw and revealing than anything I've read before, more detailed and rich. Not everyone will like these, because this level of brutal honesty is not for everyone. But these books really made me think a lot.

The old saying "the personal is political" is very true of these novels. (And you really must read all 4 -- they are really one very long novel, each continues where the last leaves off.) The story of Lenú and Lila is unforgettable. The world of postwar Naples/Italy, from the 50s when the girls first meet through the 80s, 90s, and mid-2000s, where the story concludes, is very much a part of the story. We go through the social upheavals of the 60s and 70s, the corruption and crime that plague Naples, and the sexism/paternalism of Italian society. Lila is a fictional character unlike any other, and Lenú is her counterpart and foil. They are friends, also frenemies -- you realize as you read these, at least if you are astute, that you must always question what you are reading... i.e., the reliability of the narration, as the narrator is giving her potentially biased impressions of her friend. Biased because of her own insecurities and interpretations. There is a seed of mistrust between the two women, from the beginning. And yet they are touchstones for one another, throughout their lives.

In a way, these books will make you rethink all of your relationships. How well do we really know anyone? The framing device for these books, which begin with "My Brilliant Friend" -- is brilliant in its simplicity: Lenú, the author Elena Greco, is writing this long story almost as an act of revenge, because her lifelong friend Lila (Rafaella) has essentially erased all evidence of herself and disappeared. And so Elena fights back the only way she knows how: by completely setting down the details of her lifetime of memories of her friend. A friend whose relationship she has now forfeited, by writing about her. But perhaps that's what writers must do, that is what makes them writers. They cannot NOT write about what compels them.

I will now read Ferrante's earlier novels, to see the genesis of this brilliant writer. And I will keep these novels to reread again in a few years. Take a look at the New York Times travel article on the Naples of Elena Ferrante: [...] I hope to go there and see for myself.

Read more

3 people found this helpful

Mick

Mick

5

Beautiful, Evocative, and Devastating

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2018

Verified Purchase

How do I write about my reading of The Neapolitan books and their completion in “The Story of the Lost Child” with unemotional clarity? I have been obsessed with these books ever since I began them some months ago yet in the final book, almost daily, I had to stop, put it aside, and steel myself to read the next chapter because I was so emotionally invested in the story and so distraught. Each new page brought a new experience of emotional disaster. These stories, in four volumes, about the life of two little girls who form a friendship while living in a poor neighborhood in 1950’s Naples Italy, to their matricuation as women in the time of now, are not happy stories. Yet, I think, Elena Ferrante is the best living writer on Earth today.

I finished the book on an evening when my wife was away visiting her parents. I wish I wouldn’t have. You need someone to cuddle with, to recover with, after you finish this story. I spent the night and into the morning questioning everything about my life and how I’ve lived it. I questioned my family, my education, my work, my children, my relationships, my motivations, my past, and my future. But mostly I questioned my friendships and the state of them and their failures. I am a 61 years old male, essentially the same age as Lenu, the narrator of the story. Certainly if I’d read these books at age 30 I would read them with a completely different perspective then when I read them now. But now is when I read them and, like the author telling the story of her life, with the good and very directly the bad, I can’t help but form a related assessment of my own life. It’s a very scary thing to do.

The cover and end plates of the book with recommendations from authors and critics describe these books very well. In my own words they are devastating, demanding, direct, unrelenting, fascinating, horrific, emotional, unsympathetic, visceral, lucid, loving, hateful, explosive, and all consuming. What they are clearly not is fiction. These stories seem incredibly real and that’s because every analysis says that for the most part these are real experiences.

I have read Game of Thrones and watched the television series and enjoyed them immensely. They are a horrific and highly memorable fantasy. The Neapolitan series is every bit as fraught with danger, duplicity, and deviousness as Game of Thrones except that they are not fantasy and that makes them, at times, almost unbearable. When I read the first two books I thought to myself that the only entertainment franchise who could put this on the screen is HBO. So I looked it up. HBO is bringing the series to television. From my assessment it will be the next “Game of Thrones” style global phenomenon.

I highly recommend these stories. They contain sentences and descriptions of life that many times made me stop and consider whether that sentence, which I had just read, wasn’t one of the most beautiful and evocative sentences ever written. That kind of experience is extremely pleasurable to me, but give yourself time to recover. The life and relationship of Lila and Lenu is not a kind one.

Note: Although I have the physical books for reference I “read” all of these books in audio format from Audible. The narrator, Hillary Huber, is so incredibly good that, in my mind, she will forever be the voice of Lila and Lenu.

Read more

73 people found this helpful

Sonpoppie

Sonpoppie

5

A return to the beginning

Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2016

Verified Purchase

In the final of the four volumes, Elena Ferrante returns to the beginning. Lina is missing. Then the back story again. Half a lifetime has passed and the two friends are back together in Naples, living in the same building, each with a baby. We are back to the patterns of childhood where the two girls played with their dolls, losing them into the cellar, making them disappear. Now Elena and Lina have real dolls - the same age, they birth baby girls within days of each other. Lina even calls her child by the name of Elena's erstwhile doll, Tina. The patterns of childhood re-establish themselves. Tina disappears just as Lina's and Elena's dolls disappeared, just as Lina has always promised to do herself. Lina's pattern of dissolving. The women themselves were born within days of each other in August 1944. They are twinned and entwined. Their names - Elena, Lenuccia, Lenù, Raffaella, Lina, Lila - is perhaps a play with identity and authorship. Who has authored who? Is Elena writing this story or is it Lina, by manipulating Elena? Whose story is it anyway? Who is the brilliant friend? The one who completes school, gets an education, leaves the traps of the city, becomes a writer - or the one who is so clever she absorbs knowledge on her own, has a native intelligence that goes far beyond her place in the city where she ends up learning about everything and everyone. Who is author? This is a central question within the story and without - for we do not know who the real Elena Ferrante is - just as we don't know whose story is told. Elena has written one final novel about friendship. She owes Lina everything - where would she be without her story, without her help, without Lina's brilliant pushing that urged her to do what she did? For after all, Elena took Lina's journals and threw them into the river, after reading, absorbing them. Again the reader wonders whose story this is. Is Elena telling her own story with Lina as a character, or is it Lina's story disguised, copied as Elena's? And what does Lina think? She will never know, for by the end of it, Lina has dissolved as she always threatened to do. The theme of disappearance and dissolution runs through the stories. Elena claims she has written a story in order to hold on to, keep Lina in the world, yet she goes against her friend's wishes. Elena does things on her terms, she keeps Lina in the world, her world. In these intriguing tales of friendship the author explores identity, self, meaning, the creative life. Lina is portrayed as someone who is constantly manipulating others, she forms and reforms her friends to her will. But she wants to disappear, to dissolve. Yet Lenu is the one who writes Lina, makes her say what she says, merging their identities, even their voices, so that the dialogue flows effortlessly, without any indication of who is speaking. One has to ask who is the brilliant friend? Who is the manipulative one? Are they one and the same?

Read more

71 people found this helpful

Susan

Susan

5

My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name

Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2016

Verified Purchase

Never have I read four books by the same author with such speed. Now that I think of it, I have never read four books by the same author, ever! But I could not put the Neapolitan Novels down. I read in the middle of the night, in the line at the grocery store, in between sets at the gym, and yes, even in traffic. It’s difficult to pinpoint what made this series so compelling for me. From a distance, it seems to be a story of neighborhood gossip and intrigue. But the stories go so much deeper. Ferrante creates a web of intriguing relationships, a story of the ebb and flow of life, pushed forward by the characters as they go along through their lives from childhood to old age. The characters become yours. You love them. You will not want the story to end.

Each story is told from inside the mind of Elena Greco. Her every thought is laid out for you to examine. Most of her thoughts were not pretty. Since she was 6 years old, she has been obsessed with and is in competition with her best friend, Lila. In every thought she has, every move she makes, she wonders if Lila will do better than her. She lives her life every day comparing herself to Lila, defining herself by Lila, denying her own feelings to impress Lila. As she matures, she relies on Lila to provide inspiration for her career as a writer. But she never shares her feelings with Lila. In fact, she expends a great deal of energy denying her true feelings to Lila.

Growing up in an impoverished neighborhood in Naples, Italy in the 1960’s, we follow the girls as they develop, from scrawny and awkward girls to beautiful women. Lila is brilliant, but her parents do not allow her to go to middle school. Middle school is a luxury only for the few who can afford it. Elena goes to middle school, high school and college, with the financial assistance of her professors. Lila goes to the library, she studies alone, she learns Latin and Greek and even tutors Elena. As she grows, Lila becomes the object of every man’s obsession. It first appears that her life will be charmed, that she will have all the things money can buy and great happiness. As time goes on, we see how their circumstances and their decisions define their hardships and successes throughout life. We follow the women as they become estranged, then intensely close. Never is anything steady in this relationship. Elena writes constantly about Lila, yet many times through her life she wants to avoid her.

These books address many of the issues present during these times in Italy, from the ‘60’s to the beginning of this century. Politics and corruption, violence and poverty, the abuse of the workers, the advent of technology and the personal computer.

Marriage and motherhood suppress the talents of women. All men misbehave in these stories. Each one proves himself to be a disappointment in one way or another. One man physically abuses, another sexually abuses, one abandons his responsibility to his children, another is a philanderer and deceiver.

Elena has a successful career as a writer, but her husband minimizes her career. She is “just” a fiction writer, while he is an important university professor. He torments her nightly with his sexual demands, never thinking of pleasing her. She must carry the responsibility of the children herself. She raises the children alone. Her three girls believe she thinks only of herself. They complain that she thinks only of her own career, and not of them. Yet they do not hold their father to the same standard. In fact, even though the father was largely absent in their lives, they idolize him.

The Story of the Lost Girl is the most poignant of the four stories. I will not spoil the story by revealing the plot. I will only say that Elena Ferrante nails human nature in this story. She nails what is the normal and often very hurtful response to tragedy. She has great insight into human nature, and the nature of relationships. I hope that she will continue the series with the lives of the children of Elena and Lila. I want more from this wonderful writer.

Read more

18 people found this helpful

More reviews