The Story of the Lost Child

Posted on 19 August 2018 by Elena Ferrante

Here is the dazzling saga of two women, the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila Both are now adults life s great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered Through it all, the women s friendship has remained the gravitational center of their lives Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well received books In this final book, she has returned to Naples Lila, on the other hand, never succeeded in freeing herself from the city of her birth 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 Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, the story of a lifelong friendship is told with unmatched honesty and brilliance The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and every return will bring with it new revelations. Read The Story of the Lost Child By Elena Ferrante – kino-fada.fr This novel nearly broke me The Story of the Lost Child is beautifully heartbreaking It is the culmination of Elena Ferrante s Neapolitan series, and it wraps up the story of two friends, Elena and Lila I spent my summer with these two women I read the first book, My Brilliant Friend, just to see what all the Ferrante Fever fuss was about, and I didn t expect to read anyof the series But I ended up intrigued and wanting , and I gobbled up Books 2 and 3 as quickly as I could In this This novel nearly broke me The Story of the Lost Child is beautifully heartbreaking It is the culmination of Elena Ferrante s Neapolitan series, and it wraps up the story of two friends, Elena and Lila I spent my summer with these two women I read the first book, My Brilliant Friend, just to see what all the Ferrante Fever fuss was about, and I didn t expect to read anyof the series But I ended up intrigued and wanting , and I gobbled up Books 2 and 3 as quickly as I could In this fourth book, Elena has run away from her marriage to Pietro and has a passionate affair with Nino, the boy she has loved since childhood Lila is opposed to the affair, and the women s friendship becomes evenstrained Meanwhile, Elena s writing career has ups and downs, and Lila becomes entangled in the underground politics of their old neighborhood in Naples.It is hard to explain to someone who hasn t read Ferrante why these nov...After re reading this series, I can confirm it s one of my all time favorites Ferrante is a writer I admire so much, and like I said in my original reviews, one that I know confidently I can, and will, read again and again throughout my life Original Review I m done I m actually done The journey is over, and what a wonderful journey it was Maybe soon I will be able to write a better review, but for now I can only say that this series is truly unlike anything I ve read It s a modern maste After re reading this series, I can confirm it s one of my all time favorites Ferrante is a writer I admire so much, and like I said in my original reviews, one that I know confidently I ... This is the end Beautiful friend This is the end My only friend, the end Of our elaborate plans, the end Of everything that stands, the end No safety or surprise, the end I ll never look into your eyesagain Can you picture what will be So limitless and free Desperately in needof somestranger s hand In adesperate land Lost in a Romanwilderness of pain And all the children are insane All the children are insane Waiting for the summer rain, yeah The Doors, The EndNothing about th This is the end Beautiful friend This is the end My only friend, the end Of our elaborate plans, the end Of everything that stands, the end No safety or surprise, the end I ll never look into your eyesagain Can you picture what will be So limitless a...I ve never read a series before Finally I understand why people sleep outside bookstores the day before the next instalment is due to be published Were there to be a book five I might well zipper myself inside a bag outside Feltrinelli the night before release Except there will be no next instalment here I m done Lila has left my life and I will never know anythingabout her I feel horribly bereft Book Four has less of a feel of fictional memoir about it it readslike a novel I ve never read a series before Finally I understand why people sleep outside bookstores the day before the next instalment is due to be published Were there to be a book five I might well zipper myself inside a bag outside Feltrinelli the night before release Except there will be no next instalment here I m done Lila has left my life and I will neve...Slum, Naples, Italy, 1947In reading the Neapolitan series of Elena Ferrante, I am constantly reminded of the clear influence of 19th century realism description of ordinary or familiar events as they are, with digressions into political events or societal norms to fill in the background But the ordinary or real does not mean the banal One could reasonably say that this is series of war novels It speaks without bombast or pretensions, and describes, with precise and subtle prose, a war of Slum, Naples, Italy, 1947In reading the Neapolitan series of Elena Ferrante, I am constantly reminded of the clear influence of 19th century realism description of ordinary or familiar events as they are, with digressions into political events or societal norms to fill in the background But the ordinary or real does not mean the banal One could reasonably say that this is series of war novels It speaks without bombast or pretensions, and describes, with precise and subtle prose, a war of attrition This war is one of slow burning family arguments with no real end even after long bouts of shouted insults, of the slow suffocation social roles telling you what you must and must not be There is a code word spoken very early in the first volume which tipped me off to the later developments of the rest of the book, when the two girls talk about Little ...UPDATED SEE BELOW I can t believe it s over I mean really, after finishing Ferrante s riveting tetralogy, I feel a sense of loss The fourth volume was fast paced and full of reveals no spoilers It was hard to read at several points, but always entertaining and thought provoking If you have not read it yet, please do so this year Definitely a journey to Naples that you do not want to miss.One thing that struck me with this series is the similarities and differenc...There is a terrible sense of loss once you reach the last line of the last volume of Ferrante s saga, her writing is so addictive, it has kept me company for over a year now and waiting for the next installment of the story has been a delightful suspense.I feel abandoned to my own device now that the curtain fell on this wonderful story The last volume La bambina Perduta has just been published in Italy,so I ve devoured it in three days and it s not a disappointment It has a somehow slow sta There is a terrible sense of loss once you reach the last line of the last volume of Ferrante s saga, her writing is so addictive, it has kept me company for over a year now and waiting for the next installment of the story has been a delightful suspense.I feel abandoned to my own device now that the curtain fell on this wonderful story The last volume La bambina Perduta has just been published in Italy,so I ve de... The tunnel on the edge of the neighbourhood, beyond which Lila couldn t pass.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 real The tunnel on the edge of the neighbourhood, beyond which Lila couldn t pass.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 outr...Book Four.The Final Conclusion to the Neapolitan novels And so this story begins. page 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 wantedthan to be close to me at a difficult moment, I couldn t forget the contempt with which she had trea Book Four.The Final Conclusion to the Neapolitan novels And so this story begins. page 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 wantedthan 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 ...From Celle qui fuit et celle qui reste Whenever you read a book that the author seriously cared about, you realise after a while that in fact it s two books there s the book that got written, the one you re holding in your hands, and there s the other book, the one the author wanted to write but couldn t, due to the problems inherent in being a mortal human being Sometimes the distance between the two books is close enough that you can believe they re the same I don t know how one would i From Celle qui fuit et celle qui reste Whenever you read a book that the author seriously cared about, you realise after a while that in fact it s two books there s the book that got written, the one you re holding in your hands, and there s the other book, the one the author wanted to write but couldn t, due to the problems inherent in being a mortal human being Sometimes the distance between the two books is close enough that you can believe they re the same I don t know how one would improve Candide or Alice in Wonderland maybe Voltaire and Carroll did But in other cases, it s clear that the two books are different The authors of the New Testament would have...

English
19 August 2018

Elena Ferrante