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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, Elena and Lila'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 show more 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.
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The Story of the Lost Child is the fourth and final of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels. It circles back to the first volume in at least two regards: it finally catches up with the frame narrative that started off My Brilliant Friend and in it both Raffaella / Lila and Elena / Lena return not only to Naples but to the neighbourhood where they spent their childhood and adolescence.
While the previous novels each spanned several years, this final one spans decades, roughly from the eighties into the 21st century, this incorporating both middle and old age of its protagonists. This shows how close Ferrante’s narrative nestles up against experience, and I mean not only in its content but in the specific way it is told – here, it show more mirrors the way time passes at varying speeds during different ages; a year is a very long time for a child who has not lived through many, but it passes almost without being noticed for someone who has experienced a considerable amount of them. I think everyone has noticed how time passes faster as we grow older, and Ferrante lets her series of novels reflect that structurally by giving her protagonists’ early years more room than their later ones. I am trying to avoid spoilers here, as this novel still is fairly recent and it continues to deploy a soap-operatic narrative strategy to keep the reader hooked, so I won’t be giving away any details of what is happening in The Story of the Lost Child (not that I am big on plot summaries in any case), and confine myself to saying that the feminist / political element is receding almost completely into the background (almost, but not quite – and the reader should be so sensitized by the previous novels to sense its presence even when the narrative does not shine a spotlight on it) in favour of the private circumstances of and relations between Lila and Lena.
That relationship has been at the core of the novels throughout, of course, and not the least impressive thing to admire about the Neapolitan Novels is how it has been changing constantly. Weirdly, that is something where soap opera and psychological realism meet – the first because it needs to keep the story going and thus can’t allow anything to remain static: basically, soap operas are in constant flux, there are continuous reveals of supposedly hidden sides to a character’s personality which in turn determine their various relationships. While that kind of layer cake psychology (as I like to call it) is not exactly realistic, it might end up looking very much like realism once you follow a relationship over decades as it happens in Ferrante’s novels, a period during which extreme changes in any kind of relationship are realistically almost inevitable. The difference between the two is of course that psychological realism is bound to stay within the bounds of plausibility while a soap opera emphatically is not limited by that – but this difference certainly is gradual rather than absolute, and it may be argued that in the final analysis plausibility is just another literary trope. From whichever perspective you view it, the friendship between LIla and Lena never ceases to fascinate, the way their lives revolves around each other, both drawn to and repelled by each other like twin stars, the way each mirrors the other’s hopes and desires, one always seeming to have attained what the other is lacking, and finally the way the course of this friendship traces the developments in Italian from the 1950s into the 21st century.
Like the previous volumes, The Story of the Lost Child pays close attention to language – the way it is used to not only mark geographical but also class distinctions, and how command of language, knowing how to write or talk well, can give some degree of power which is not bound to social status or financial wealth (although attaining that command will of course be greatly facilitated if one’s family is influential or wealthy). A power which can also be used to hurt – something that paradoxically not the writer Lena but Lila appears to be more aware of, maybe because, as the narrator keeps reminding us, the Neapolitan dialect Lila is speaking is inherently aggressive. So Lila attempts to erase herself out of existence like a failed novel while Lena finally finishes the memoirs of her friendship which she started at the beginning of A Brilliant Friend and publishes them, knowing this will hurt her friend’s feeling even as it might revive her failing career as an author, and so the book comes full circle in yet another regard, as that book is possibly the one we have been reading, this causing the series to metafictionally turn back upon itself. Or does it? The book Lena publishes is a referred to as a slim volume, and slim is something the Neapolitan Novels certainly are not. The circle does not quite close, there is a gap left, and in a way it is that gap which all four novels (all but the first of which are designated as “Storia” in their original Italian titles, by the way) has been revolving al the time, spinning its tale of friendship and power, of love and violence in that small but unclosable space between reality and fiction. show less
While the previous novels each spanned several years, this final one spans decades, roughly from the eighties into the 21st century, this incorporating both middle and old age of its protagonists. This shows how close Ferrante’s narrative nestles up against experience, and I mean not only in its content but in the specific way it is told – here, it show more mirrors the way time passes at varying speeds during different ages; a year is a very long time for a child who has not lived through many, but it passes almost without being noticed for someone who has experienced a considerable amount of them. I think everyone has noticed how time passes faster as we grow older, and Ferrante lets her series of novels reflect that structurally by giving her protagonists’ early years more room than their later ones. I am trying to avoid spoilers here, as this novel still is fairly recent and it continues to deploy a soap-operatic narrative strategy to keep the reader hooked, so I won’t be giving away any details of what is happening in The Story of the Lost Child (not that I am big on plot summaries in any case), and confine myself to saying that the feminist / political element is receding almost completely into the background (almost, but not quite – and the reader should be so sensitized by the previous novels to sense its presence even when the narrative does not shine a spotlight on it) in favour of the private circumstances of and relations between Lila and Lena.
That relationship has been at the core of the novels throughout, of course, and not the least impressive thing to admire about the Neapolitan Novels is how it has been changing constantly. Weirdly, that is something where soap opera and psychological realism meet – the first because it needs to keep the story going and thus can’t allow anything to remain static: basically, soap operas are in constant flux, there are continuous reveals of supposedly hidden sides to a character’s personality which in turn determine their various relationships. While that kind of layer cake psychology (as I like to call it) is not exactly realistic, it might end up looking very much like realism once you follow a relationship over decades as it happens in Ferrante’s novels, a period during which extreme changes in any kind of relationship are realistically almost inevitable. The difference between the two is of course that psychological realism is bound to stay within the bounds of plausibility while a soap opera emphatically is not limited by that – but this difference certainly is gradual rather than absolute, and it may be argued that in the final analysis plausibility is just another literary trope. From whichever perspective you view it, the friendship between LIla and Lena never ceases to fascinate, the way their lives revolves around each other, both drawn to and repelled by each other like twin stars, the way each mirrors the other’s hopes and desires, one always seeming to have attained what the other is lacking, and finally the way the course of this friendship traces the developments in Italian from the 1950s into the 21st century.
Like the previous volumes, The Story of the Lost Child pays close attention to language – the way it is used to not only mark geographical but also class distinctions, and how command of language, knowing how to write or talk well, can give some degree of power which is not bound to social status or financial wealth (although attaining that command will of course be greatly facilitated if one’s family is influential or wealthy). A power which can also be used to hurt – something that paradoxically not the writer Lena but Lila appears to be more aware of, maybe because, as the narrator keeps reminding us, the Neapolitan dialect Lila is speaking is inherently aggressive. So Lila attempts to erase herself out of existence like a failed novel while Lena finally finishes the memoirs of her friendship which she started at the beginning of A Brilliant Friend and publishes them, knowing this will hurt her friend’s feeling even as it might revive her failing career as an author, and so the book comes full circle in yet another regard, as that book is possibly the one we have been reading, this causing the series to metafictionally turn back upon itself. Or does it? The book Lena publishes is a referred to as a slim volume, and slim is something the Neapolitan Novels certainly are not. The circle does not quite close, there is a gap left, and in a way it is that gap which all four novels (all but the first of which are designated as “Storia” in their original Italian titles, by the way) has been revolving al the time, spinning its tale of friendship and power, of love and violence in that small but unclosable space between reality and fiction. show less
When I arrived in Naples I had just read the Claudio Gatti article which claimed to expose Elena Ferrante's real identity. I remembered being amazed, when it had come out back in 2016, by the fury it had provoked. People were outraged! Not just readers but literary editors too had lined up to condemn the piece – putting across, in the process, a lot of wrong-headed ideas about ‘the death of the author’ which should really have been kept separate from the ethical concerns in question.
But now I've finished the last book I think I understand the disproportionate reaction a bit better. The Story of the Lost Child is, like its three predecessors, a bit of a messy novel, stylistically indifferent, but intensely emotional and involving. show more And everyone struggles to understand why. Despite what some reviews imply, this kind of long, female-focused Künstlerroman is not a complete novelty – it's not a million miles from Doris Lessing's Children of Violence sequence, or AS Byatt's Frederica quartet – and even the notion of a woman trying to piece together the details of her friend's life is, if Gatti is right, probably lifted from Christa Wolf's The Quest for Christa T. But Ferrante's characters – especially the flinty, talismanic Lila – are so comprehensively imagined that they must, you feel, reflect something essentially autobiographical, something profoundly true, on the part of the author.
So I get to Naples. I've just read book four, I've just read Gatti's article. I want to go and see the rione or ‘neighbourhood’ where the books are set, which is a run-down little area of estates in the eastern suburbs called the Rione Luzzatti. I ask a few cab drivers: they won't take us to that part of town. ‘The criminal families live there,’ one leers. Then I try some tour agents – they all refuse as well. One of them even specialises in Elena Ferrante tours, but it turns out on further inquiry that they just go to the upmarket Piazza dei Martiri (where the characters go shopping when they've got some money) and the historical centre. ‘The rione is not good for tourists,’ I am told. ‘Actually, even we do not go there.’
Eventually, though, I find someone who knows someone who has a friend who will take us.(If you want to do this too, start by talking to Sophia at Looking for Lila.) Laura, who grew up in the rione herself, comes to meet us: she is super friendly and, far from being offended by our desire to gawk at her childhood stomping-ground, which is what I'd been worried about, she actually seems rather touched by it, and is genuinely excited about the chance to show us around. We walk down the famous stradone, litter-swept and bleak, and peer through grates into communal cellars like the one where Lila dropped Lenù's doll. We walk through the tunnel that marked the edge of the girls' world, where some of the lights have been smashed, the better to mug people walking back home from the nearest metro station. We walk by the school, where 11-year-old Laura had to fend off knife crime from 16-year-olds who had been held back so many times they were sitting right next to her in class. We creep into the courtyard where Lila's apartment is set and where, locals are convinced, from cross-referencing details in a variety of books and articles, Ferrante herself once lived.
Laura and her friends, she says, are proud and happy that Ferrante has now immortalised the place ‘for something positive – for books, for literature’. I am a little surprised, if only because, in the novels, the locals are not so happy when Lenù starts writing about the area.
But of course, Elena Greco is not Elena Ferrante. It's always an effort to remember that, because that's the conceit that the books are selling: an author called Elena writing a narrator who is an author called Elena. Draw your own conclusions, they suggest. And yeah, they must surely contain lots that is true, like all good fiction does. But reading these books is such an overwhelming experience that the slightest retreat from autobiography starts to feel almost unacceptable: OK, OK, maybe you've reordered events a bit, drawn out a couple of poetic coincidences, conflated a couple of minor characters here and there – but the essentials are true, right? You really grew up like this, didn't you? There's a real Lila out there somewhere…yes?
The idea that the author could be in here somewhere, waiting to be found, is helped along by the books' constant theme of authorship and unstable identities. We don't know who wrote what, only that both Elena and Lina have been writing something; Elena worries that Lina has quasi-mystically entered into her computer to tell her story her own way; then she denies it. There is an almost Nervalian reduplication of women, starting with the Lenù/Lila pairing, one blonde, one brunette, one who leaves, one who stays, one who writes fiction, the other who writes computer code;
I fair, she dark, I calm, she anxious, I likeable, she malicious, the two of us opposite and united….
Even their daughters are mistaken for each other, misidentified. And Lina is further refracted into their friend Alfonso, who looks like her and starts to dress like her, too. At times, Lina the character seems to recognise her own fluidity. She talks about disappearing, about erasing herself; she does in fact vanish without trace. And she has regular psychological episodes of smarginatura, the ‘bleeding’ of one object or person into another, which Ann Goldstein translates a little awkwardly as dissolving boundaries. All of this is, really, in the service of the fantasy of an ‘Elena Ferrante’ who can become whoever we need her to be for the novels to have the greatest power for us.
Standing in the little square, Hannah and I get a bit emotional. Actually, the area is a lot like parts of Livingston, where my wife grew up; it's like run-down, neglected suburbs in a lot of cities. To elevate this kind of urban wasteland into something transcendent seems like a heroic feat – it suddenly reminds me a bit of what Alan Moore did with Northampton, though it's even more impressive because there are no forgotten historical riches underlying the Rione Luzzatti – it's just stark, rationalist housing, built by Fascists, and subsequently ignored. Until Ferrante.
But again I check myself immediately. I'm constructing my own emotional story of what Ferrante did, the same way all readers of these books do. How much difference would it make if that isn't her apartment, if she grew up miles away in Rome, if her husband was the one with the Neapolitan childhood, the dialect? If it was all a brilliant fabrication? What would that do to our experience of the books?
It's almost – I say to Hannah – like the greatest creation in these novels is not anyone listed in the cast, but ‘Elena Ferrante’ herself. Hannah nods. But all morning we stare at every old woman we pass, searching for Lila Cerullo's face. show less
But now I've finished the last book I think I understand the disproportionate reaction a bit better. The Story of the Lost Child is, like its three predecessors, a bit of a messy novel, stylistically indifferent, but intensely emotional and involving. show more And everyone struggles to understand why. Despite what some reviews imply, this kind of long, female-focused Künstlerroman is not a complete novelty – it's not a million miles from Doris Lessing's Children of Violence sequence, or AS Byatt's Frederica quartet – and even the notion of a woman trying to piece together the details of her friend's life is, if Gatti is right, probably lifted from Christa Wolf's The Quest for Christa T. But Ferrante's characters – especially the flinty, talismanic Lila – are so comprehensively imagined that they must, you feel, reflect something essentially autobiographical, something profoundly true, on the part of the author.
So I get to Naples. I've just read book four, I've just read Gatti's article. I want to go and see the rione or ‘neighbourhood’ where the books are set, which is a run-down little area of estates in the eastern suburbs called the Rione Luzzatti. I ask a few cab drivers: they won't take us to that part of town. ‘The criminal families live there,’ one leers. Then I try some tour agents – they all refuse as well. One of them even specialises in Elena Ferrante tours, but it turns out on further inquiry that they just go to the upmarket Piazza dei Martiri (where the characters go shopping when they've got some money) and the historical centre. ‘The rione is not good for tourists,’ I am told. ‘Actually, even we do not go there.’
Eventually, though, I find someone who knows someone who has a friend who will take us.
Laura and her friends, she says, are proud and happy that Ferrante has now immortalised the place ‘for something positive – for books, for literature’. I am a little surprised, if only because, in the novels, the locals are not so happy when Lenù starts writing about the area.
But of course, Elena Greco is not Elena Ferrante. It's always an effort to remember that, because that's the conceit that the books are selling: an author called Elena writing a narrator who is an author called Elena. Draw your own conclusions, they suggest. And yeah, they must surely contain lots that is true, like all good fiction does. But reading these books is such an overwhelming experience that the slightest retreat from autobiography starts to feel almost unacceptable: OK, OK, maybe you've reordered events a bit, drawn out a couple of poetic coincidences, conflated a couple of minor characters here and there – but the essentials are true, right? You really grew up like this, didn't you? There's a real Lila out there somewhere…yes?
The idea that the author could be in here somewhere, waiting to be found, is helped along by the books' constant theme of authorship and unstable identities. We don't know who wrote what, only that both Elena and Lina have been writing something; Elena worries that Lina has quasi-mystically entered into her computer to tell her story her own way; then she denies it. There is an almost Nervalian reduplication of women, starting with the Lenù/Lila pairing, one blonde, one brunette, one who leaves, one who stays, one who writes fiction, the other who writes computer code;
I fair, she dark, I calm, she anxious, I likeable, she malicious, the two of us opposite and united….
Even their daughters are mistaken for each other, misidentified. And Lina is further refracted into their friend Alfonso, who looks like her and starts to dress like her, too. At times, Lina the character seems to recognise her own fluidity. She talks about disappearing, about erasing herself; she does in fact vanish without trace. And she has regular psychological episodes of smarginatura, the ‘bleeding’ of one object or person into another, which Ann Goldstein translates a little awkwardly as dissolving boundaries. All of this is, really, in the service of the fantasy of an ‘Elena Ferrante’ who can become whoever we need her to be for the novels to have the greatest power for us.
Standing in the little square, Hannah and I get a bit emotional. Actually, the area is a lot like parts of Livingston, where my wife grew up; it's like run-down, neglected suburbs in a lot of cities. To elevate this kind of urban wasteland into something transcendent seems like a heroic feat – it suddenly reminds me a bit of what Alan Moore did with Northampton, though it's even more impressive because there are no forgotten historical riches underlying the Rione Luzzatti – it's just stark, rationalist housing, built by Fascists, and subsequently ignored. Until Ferrante.
But again I check myself immediately. I'm constructing my own emotional story of what Ferrante did, the same way all readers of these books do. How much difference would it make if that isn't her apartment, if she grew up miles away in Rome, if her husband was the one with the Neapolitan childhood, the dialect? If it was all a brilliant fabrication? What would that do to our experience of the books?
It's almost – I say to Hannah – like the greatest creation in these novels is not anyone listed in the cast, but ‘Elena Ferrante’ herself. Hannah nods. But all morning we stare at every old woman we pass, searching for Lila Cerullo's face. show less
"The only things that count are work and Aunt Lina; there's nothing that's not swallowed up inside them"
By sally tarbox on 3 February 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
Final volume of Ferrante's fabulous Neapolitan series, and it's utterly brilliant, taking the reader back to the first book.
This follows the two friends from their 30s to their 60s; narrator Elena is becoming an increasingly successful author, while Lila remains in the same Naples neighbourhood, running a computer business. Both mothers already, they each fall pregnant again.... Much of this story focusses on the impact their children have on their lives; the sadness as the beautiful young people of the first couple of volumes grow old and suffer various problems.
But these are show more not just light reading - the characters are complex and this truly is great writing.
Having read all four books over just a few weeks, I could gladly re-read them all. show less
By sally tarbox on 3 February 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
Final volume of Ferrante's fabulous Neapolitan series, and it's utterly brilliant, taking the reader back to the first book.
This follows the two friends from their 30s to their 60s; narrator Elena is becoming an increasingly successful author, while Lila remains in the same Naples neighbourhood, running a computer business. Both mothers already, they each fall pregnant again.... Much of this story focusses on the impact their children have on their lives; the sadness as the beautiful young people of the first couple of volumes grow old and suffer various problems.
But these are show more not just light reading - the characters are complex and this truly is great writing.
Having read all four books over just a few weeks, I could gladly re-read them all. show less
Was this the volume I like least of all? At times yes it was. At times not. Yes because I got tired of all the self-analysis and ego editorializing. No because her prose and insights are often compelling and riveting. No because she is a skillful narrator, picking up the pace and shifting sub-stories as I was starting to yawn from the self-analysis. Yes because the loss is so horrendous -- perhaps the worst possible. Yet, the usually quiet Enzo's long(est) speech to Lenu is so perceptive and penetrating; it was deeply moving. This series as a whole is, in my opinion, one of the greats of modern world literature.
I listened to this is in audiobook format.
The fourth and last novel in the Neapolitan novels series follows all the well-established characters into their 40s and beyond. It is increasingly a high-drama soap opera full of divorces, affairs, murders, and arrests, but still very seriously addressing the changes in Italy, the nuclear family, and the friendship between Elena and Lila. Every relationship in the novel is toxic and exhibits the disastrous results of poor communication, passivity, and violence. The various volatile Italian governments and activist movements are similarly disastrous and full of violence and corruption. I loved the whole series and this book covers a lot of ground finish it out.
The fourth and last novel in the Neapolitan novels series follows all the well-established characters into their 40s and beyond. It is increasingly a high-drama soap opera full of divorces, affairs, murders, and arrests, but still very seriously addressing the changes in Italy, the nuclear family, and the friendship between Elena and Lila. Every relationship in the novel is toxic and exhibits the disastrous results of poor communication, passivity, and violence. The various volatile Italian governments and activist movements are similarly disastrous and full of violence and corruption. I loved the whole series and this book covers a lot of ground finish it out.
Lila und Lenu, die Ich-Erzählerin, sind nun beide in den Dreißigern und treffen sich im Rione wieder, dem Ort ihrer Kindheit. Lila hat sich gemeinsam mit Enzo, einem Freund ihrer Kindheitstage, ein erfolgreiches Unternehmen aufgebaut, während Lenu nach ihrem Studium eine erfolgreiche Autorin wurde. Für ihre große Jugendliebe Nino hat sie ihren Mann verlassen und ist gemeinsam mit ihren beiden Töchtern zurück nach Neapel gezogen. Noch immer verbindet die beiden Frauen ihre Freundschaft aus Kindertagen und als sie zeitgleich schwanger sind, kommen sie sich fast so nahe wie früher. Doch das Leben Beider erfährt jeweils eine dramatische Wendung, die Alles verändert.
So, wie sich die beiden Protagonistinnen im Laufe der Zeit show more verändern, wandelt sich auch der Stil des Buches. Während in den vorhergehenden Bänden das 'Außenleben' eine wichtige Rolle spielte, sind es nunmehr die Reflexionen der Ich-Erzählerin über sich selbst und ihre Freundin Lila, die überdies zunehmend komplexer werden. Obwohl Lenu mittlerweile gebildet und erfolgreich ist und Lila gerade einmal die fünfte Klasse Grundschule abgeschlossen hat, verspürt Lenu noch immer Minderwertigkeitskomplexe gegenüber ihrer Freundin. Doch man spürt auch, welchen Einfluss der Rione, ihre neue alte Heimat, auf sie hat. Noch immer ist es ein Ort der Gewalt und der Unterdrückung, obendrein ist mit dem Drogenhandel ein neues Geschäftsfeld aufgetaucht. Die gebildete, erfolgreiche Autorin realisiert, dass ihr diese Welt fremd geworden, während ihre Freundin, die den Rione nie verlassen hat, noch immer ein Teil davon ist. Zunehmend fühlt sich Lenu von Lila manipuliert und benutzt, damit diese ihre eigenen Interessen durchsetzt.
Beim Lesen war ich immer wieder auf's Neue hin- und hergerissen: Ist Lila tatsächlich so ein Biest, wie Lenu sie gelegentlich beschreibt? Oder ist sie nicht vielmehr eine Art Lichtgestalt, einer der wenigen Menschen, die ihre Werte und Überzeugungen auch dann vertreten, wenn sie ihnen zum Nachteil gereichen? Jemand, die sich der Konsequenz ihrer (eventuellen) Handlungen bewusst ist und entsprechend verstandesmäßig entscheidet? Ihren Verstand stets über ihre Gefühle stellt? Und Lenu nur aufgrund ihrer Komplexe Lila alles Mögliche unterstellt? Ich bin mir sicher, diese vier Bände werden künftigen GermanistikstudentInnen eine Menge Material für Interpretationen und Erörterungen bieten ;-)
Ich habe die Figuren dieser Neapel-Saga während des Lesens der vier Bände lieb gewonnen und hatte das Gefühl, mich tatsächlich im Rione ein bisschen auszukennen. Vielleicht sollte ich nun, nachdem ich von dort nichts mehr zu Lesen bekomme, mal selber nach Neapel fahren ;-) show less
So, wie sich die beiden Protagonistinnen im Laufe der Zeit show more verändern, wandelt sich auch der Stil des Buches. Während in den vorhergehenden Bänden das 'Außenleben' eine wichtige Rolle spielte, sind es nunmehr die Reflexionen der Ich-Erzählerin über sich selbst und ihre Freundin Lila, die überdies zunehmend komplexer werden. Obwohl Lenu mittlerweile gebildet und erfolgreich ist und Lila gerade einmal die fünfte Klasse Grundschule abgeschlossen hat, verspürt Lenu noch immer Minderwertigkeitskomplexe gegenüber ihrer Freundin. Doch man spürt auch, welchen Einfluss der Rione, ihre neue alte Heimat, auf sie hat. Noch immer ist es ein Ort der Gewalt und der Unterdrückung, obendrein ist mit dem Drogenhandel ein neues Geschäftsfeld aufgetaucht. Die gebildete, erfolgreiche Autorin realisiert, dass ihr diese Welt fremd geworden, während ihre Freundin, die den Rione nie verlassen hat, noch immer ein Teil davon ist. Zunehmend fühlt sich Lenu von Lila manipuliert und benutzt, damit diese ihre eigenen Interessen durchsetzt.
Beim Lesen war ich immer wieder auf's Neue hin- und hergerissen: Ist Lila tatsächlich so ein Biest, wie Lenu sie gelegentlich beschreibt? Oder ist sie nicht vielmehr eine Art Lichtgestalt, einer der wenigen Menschen, die ihre Werte und Überzeugungen auch dann vertreten, wenn sie ihnen zum Nachteil gereichen? Jemand, die sich der Konsequenz ihrer (eventuellen) Handlungen bewusst ist und entsprechend verstandesmäßig entscheidet? Ihren Verstand stets über ihre Gefühle stellt? Und Lenu nur aufgrund ihrer Komplexe Lila alles Mögliche unterstellt? Ich bin mir sicher, diese vier Bände werden künftigen GermanistikstudentInnen eine Menge Material für Interpretationen und Erörterungen bieten ;-)
Ich habe die Figuren dieser Neapel-Saga während des Lesens der vier Bände lieb gewonnen und hatte das Gefühl, mich tatsächlich im Rione ein bisschen auszukennen. Vielleicht sollte ich nun, nachdem ich von dort nichts mehr zu Lesen bekomme, mal selber nach Neapel fahren ;-) show less
Elena Ferrante in the Neapolitan Quartet, often dubbed as her magnus opus, has captured life and this books marks the end of the saga. That’s it. In four volumes, in our journey with Lila and Lenú from childhood to their old age, we experience a very natural flow of life of human beings and of Naples - which is more that a city, it is a central character.
At the end of the book I was simply left thinking about my life choices, my motivation. Elena Ferrante does two things beautifully - foreshadowing, personal reflections. She somehow brings everything into a neat conclusion while still leaving most things open-ended.
The evolution of Elena and Lila’s friendship comes full circle here. Throughout all four novels, we see Lila through show more Lenú’s eyes - a mysterious enigma who is at times a rival, a model, a ghost, and the person she loves the most. But in the end, Ferrante lets us glimpse how Lila saw Elena. And that cracked everything open. Lila, who detached from everything, be it people, be it dreams and ideas, made an exception for Elena. It wasn’t one-sided. The obsession, the flame, was real, and it was mutual. And Lila was the one who lit it and they both kept it alive.
The question of authorship runs deep here. Elena is plagued by feelings of inadequacy and imposter syndrome - she thinks she’s a thief. She doubts her own voice, calls herself derivative, constantly measures herself against Lila, and also, Nino. But Elena is unreliable, especially about herself. Her imposter syndrome is loud, but her work speaks for itself. She is the writer.
Another prominent facet is the depiction of rage in two ways. Elena intellectualizes hers. Lila unleashes it. But, neither of them wins. Or maybe both of them do. There’s no way to know, it’s really two women surviving in different keys. Or maybe not surviving. We don't know.
It doesn’t offer closure because life doesn’t. We tell ourselves stories to survive, but they’re never the full truth. All we really have is our interpretation of events and a thoroughly unreliable memory. And that’s what Elena Ferrante leaves us with. show less
At the end of the book I was simply left thinking about my life choices, my motivation. Elena Ferrante does two things beautifully - foreshadowing, personal reflections. She somehow brings everything into a neat conclusion while still leaving most things open-ended.
The evolution of Elena and Lila’s friendship comes full circle here. Throughout all four novels, we see Lila through show more Lenú’s eyes - a mysterious enigma who is at times a rival, a model, a ghost, and the person she loves the most. But in the end, Ferrante lets us glimpse how Lila saw Elena. And that cracked everything open. Lila, who detached from everything, be it people, be it dreams and ideas, made an exception for Elena. It wasn’t one-sided. The obsession, the flame, was real, and it was mutual. And Lila was the one who lit it and they both kept it alive.
The question of authorship runs deep here. Elena is plagued by feelings of inadequacy and imposter syndrome - she thinks she’s a thief. She doubts her own voice, calls herself derivative, constantly measures herself against Lila, and also, Nino. But Elena is unreliable, especially about herself. Her imposter syndrome is loud, but her work speaks for itself. She is the writer.
Another prominent facet is the depiction of rage in two ways. Elena intellectualizes hers. Lila unleashes it. But, neither of them wins. Or maybe both of them do. There’s no way to know, it’s really two women surviving in different keys. Or maybe not surviving. We don't know.
It doesn’t offer closure because life doesn’t. We tell ourselves stories to survive, but they’re never the full truth. All we really have is our interpretation of events and a thoroughly unreliable memory. And that’s what Elena Ferrante leaves us with. show less
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ThingScore 90
Ferrante evokes this unforgiving and opaque culture with great power. Its malevolence affects almost everyone.
added by ScattershotSteph
Ferrante’s accomplishment in these novels is to extract an enduring masterpiece from dissolving margins, from the commingling of self and other, creator and created, new and old, real and whatever the opposite of real may be.
added by ScattershotSteph
[Ferrante] has charted, as precisely as possible, the shifts in one person’s feelings and perceptions about another over time, and in so doing has made a life’s inferno recede even as she captures its roar.
added by ScattershotSteph
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Author Information
42+ Works 27,925 Members
Elena Ferrante was born in Naples, Italy. Her work includes Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, The Story of the Lost Child, The Story of a New Name, The Lost Daughter, Fragments, and My Brilliant Friend. She is the author of My Brilliant Friend which made The New York Times Bestsellers List and The New Zealand Best Seller List 2015. She was show more included on Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards and Honors
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Story of the Lost Child
- Original title
- Storia della bambina perduta
- Alternate titles*
- L'amie prodigieuse. Tome 4 : L'enfant perdue
- Original publication date
- 2015
- People/Characters
- Raffaella Cerullo (Lila); Elena Greco (Lenuccia); Rino Cerullo; Elisa Greco; Stefano Carracci; Pinuccia Carracci (show all 18); Alfonso Carracci; Pasquale Peluso; Carmela (Carmen | Carmen); Ada Cappuccio; Antonio Cappuccio; Nino Sarratore; Marisa Sarratore; Enzo Scanno; Marcello Solara; Michele Solara; Gigliola Spagnuolo; Pietro Airota
- Important places
- Naples, Campania, Italy
- Epigraph*
- /
- Dedication*
- /
- First words
- From October 1976 until 1979, when I returned to Naples to live, I avoided resuming a steady relationship with Lila.
- Quotations
- There is this presumption, in those who feel destined for art and above all literature: we act as if we had received an investiture, but in fact no one has ever invested us with anything, it is we who have authorized ourselve... (show all)s to be authors and yet we are resentful if others say: This little thing you did doesn't interest me, in fact it bores me, who gave you the right.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Contrairement aux récits, la vraie vie, une fois passée, tend non pas vers la clarté mais vers l'obscurité. Je me suis dit : Maintenant que Lila s'est montrée aussi nettement, il faut que je me résigne à ne plus la voir.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I thought: now that Lila has let herself be seen so plainly, I must resign myself to not seeing her anymore. - Blurbers
- Deraniyagala, Sonali; Gilmore, Jennifer; Flanagan, Richard; Archer, Jeffrey; Malla, Pasha
- Original language
- Italian
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 853.92
- Canonical LCC
- PQ4866.E6345
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- General Fiction, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 853.92 — Literature & rhetoric Italian, Romanian & related literatures Italian fiction 1900- 21st Century
- LCC
- PQ4866 .E6345 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures Italian literature Individual authors, 1961-2000
- BISAC
Statistics
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- 24 — Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Croatian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 98
- UPCs
- 1
- ASINs
- 24
