The Story of the Lost Child

Starred review from June 1, 2015
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. The two friends face the chaos of a corrupt and decaying Naples while the lives of the people closest to themâplagued by abandonment, imprisonment, murder, and betrayalâspiral out of control. "Where is it written that lives should have a meaning?" Lila asks Elena, disparaging her friend's career choice in the process. Readers will need the accompanying index of characters to keep track as Ferrante resolves the themes and events from earlier titles (My Brilliant Friend; The Story of a New Name; Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay) with a force and ferocity recalling the devastating earthquake of 1980 and Vesuvius's volcanic eruptions, which themselves provide the unsettling background to the narrative. Ferrante's precise foreshadowing is such that an early incident of a lost doll in book one mirrors the lost child in book four right down to their shared first nameâand "The Blue Fairy," the story Lila scribbled in a childhood notebook that Elena threw in the Arno, resurfaces in this installment's final pages. Throughout, there's the sense of the circle completing: near the end, Elena pens a short novel entitled "A Friendship" (a metafictional nod to Ferrante's series as a whole), inspired by her half-century relationship with Lila. The novel is Elena's final work and permanently ties Elena and Lila together, for better and worse. 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.

Starred review from June 15, 2015
Inexorable seismic changes-in society and in the lives of two female friends-mark the final volume of Ferrante's Neapolitan series. Elena and Lila, the emotionally entwined duo at the center of Ferrante's (Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, 2014, etc.) unsentimental examination of women's lives and relationships, advance through middle age and early old age (perhaps) in this calamitous denouement to their saga. The more fortunate Elena, an author who struggles to assert herself in the misogynistic world of 1970s and '80s Italy, is drawn back to Naples and its internecine bloodshed; Lila, who has stayed in the city of their youth, is at odds with its controlling families. Elena's "escape" and attempts at personal and familial fulfillment, on her own terms, hint at the changing roles of women in that era, but it's Lila's daily struggle in a Camorra-controlled neighborhood that illuminates the deep fractures within contemporary Italian society. The paths to self-determination taken by the lifelong friends merge and separate periodically as the demands of child-rearing, work, and community exert their forces. The far-reaching effects of a horrific blow to Lila's carefully maintained equilibrium resonate through much of the story and echo Ferrante's trademark themes of betrayal and loss. While avid devotees of the Neapolitan series will be gratified by the return of several characters from earlier installments, the need to cover ground in the final volume results in a telescoped delivery of some plot points. Elena's narrative, once again, never wavers in tone and confidently carries readers through the course of two lives, but the shadowy circumstances of those lives will invite rereading and reinterpretation. 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.

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Starred review from July 1, 2015
The fourth and final volume of Ferrante's Neapolitan seriesoriginally conceived as a trilogypicks up shortly after the closing of Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014). Pursuing love and her writing career in a passionate fury in the late 1970s, Elena eventually lands on Lila's ceiling, occupying the small, neighborhood apartment in Naples above her friend's. Elena's return to hers and Lila's violent birthplace begins a period of calm, warmth, and stability uncommon in their friendship, yet, nonetheless, peripheral threads begin to fray. Beyond day-to-day dealings with their combined families, the women must contend with the continuous threats posed by life in their corrupt birthplace, a challenge they meet in quite different fashions. Although the eponymous child is of profound importance here, it's the disappearance revealed at the series' onset and to which Ferrante returns, after navigating the 40-plus-year span covered in the story, that will compel readers forward, puzzling over it and anticipating resolution. As Elena ages, struggling to understand her relationship to her books' success, she writesand we read, a level removeda story about story and its authorship. A friendship so reflective and yet so repellent, so truthfully plumbed, is a rare thing written. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Word of mouth launched this series, glowing reviews helped, and, eventually, a publishing phenomenon was born. The series' conclusion is a genuine literary event.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)