The Story of the Lost Child

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 1950s 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 wouldnt 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 Ive 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 Id 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 cant help but form a related assessment of my own life. Its 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 thats 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, wasnt 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.

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, Len, 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?

The fourth book in Ferrante’s epic series of Neapolitan novels, The Story of the Lost Child brings us back to the disorderly disturbing violent area in Naples where Elena (Lenu or Lenuccia) and Lina (Lila or Raffaella) grew up in post-war Italy. I think many prior reviewers, when they refer to “the 1950s,” may be thinking of the 1950s in the USA. Naples, which had been bombed 200 times during the war by the Allies — that’s us — because of the strategic value of its port, was recovering from a disaster not unlike the one threatened by nearby Vesuvius. After we Allies liberated Naples, we put residents on a ration of 100 calories per day. That’s an apple, 40 grapes, a couple pieces of bread! These folks were desperate, and education — or, in Lila’s case, entrepreneurship — were the only way out. Lenu chooses the former, while her brilliant friend, the latter. Thus the sweeping novel is to my mind a masterwork, like War & Peace or A Tale of Two Cities, describing a place, a time, and people milling about together and making their way in a dystopic world. As another review said, If you want chick lit, forget it. If you want to delve into a story that will captivate you and that your granddaughters will also read, dig in.

I first saw the drama series on sky my brilliant friend which was the reason why I bought the four novels I couldn’t wait for the next drama series to start just wanted to know what happens next. I loved all four of her books! Would definitely recommend to everyone!

Ferrante writes about female friendship in a way that pulls no punches. Nothing is a cliche. The emotions are real. I feel as though she can see into the soul of every woman. The rivalries and jealousies and love and loyalty are all so raw. The unexpected twists and turns of the lives of Lenu and Lila feel so real it’s hard to believe it is fiction. Having now read all four books, I am now at a bit of a loss on how to find something to read that can possibly equal their depth.

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