The Story Of The Lost Child

A Sprawling Epic

The Story Of The Lost Child is the fourth and final book in Elena Ferrante’s sprawling, complicated Neapolitan quartet (translated by Ann Goldstein). Those who haven’t read the earlier three--My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013) and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014) would find it a bit difficult to pick up the threads of the many criss-crossing stories, even though the author provides a detailed cast of characters – the various families and their connections.

A bit about Elena Ferrante—the most famous writer of Italian bestsellers writes under an assumed name and her identity has been a closely guarded secret ever since she first began to publish in 1992.  From her books it can be assumed that she is a native of Naples, and that the book may have some autobiographical elements.

The narrator of The Story Of The Lost Child is also a writer called Elena Greco, who grew up in a place just referred to as “the neighbourhood” but from her descriptions it is clear that it is slum, full of crime, poverty, and thwarted ambition, ruled by the Solaras family.  Woven into the soap opera of the friendship between Elena and Lina, is an overview of Italian politics, the social and economic upheaveals in the country, and of course, organized crime—the Italians did ‘invent’ the Mafia.

In this book, Elena is facing the aftermath of leaving her husband Pietro and abandoning her daughters, Dede and Elisa, for the sake of the handsome and rich Nino, who was once Lina’s lover.  The situation is rather civilized, Pietro’s mother Adele looks after the kids as Elena traipses around on work related trips, and the estranged couple continue to live under the same roof.

Her friend Lila, on the other hand, never stepped out of Naples and the “neighbourhood” but is an entrepreneur, an early mover in the field of computers. She has also left her husband and is living with the kindly Enzo and her son Gennaro by her first husband.  

When Elena hits a low patch in her career and her relationship with Nino, she moves back into the neighbourhood, that she worked so hard to escape from, using her education as a springboard. She gets an apartment just above Lila’s, this proximity to her past helps her writing and she is soon on the road to success, even as she seems to fail as a daughter and a mother.  Even though Ferrante writes with understanding and empathy about the position of women in Italian society, she still can’t help judge Elena for choosing a career over family. The turmoil her daughters are put through and how they turn out because of it, points to Elena’s neglect of them. The fathers are just bystanders who, like Pietro, are providers, or like Nino distant and glamorous, occasional visitors and bearers of gifts.

Lila takes on the responsibility of Elena’s daughters, as she travels and chases fame.  Both Elena and Lila find themselves pregnant at the same time and give birth to daughters Imma and Tina. It is Lila’s tragedy that is at the core of this book, and around it, life in the teeming neighbourhood goes on; men and women slog, fight, marry, divorce, have children, fall ill, die, rebuild their lives after a devastating earthquake. The sexual revolution takes place, a gay man comes out of the closet and entitled men like Nino hold the reins of the country.

At one level there is so much happening in the book, and at another Elena and Lila’s domestic dramas play out in mundane detail. Ferrante writes in a breathless style that hurls the reader from one episode to another without pause to reflect.  Reading the three earlier books (the many references to Ischia, for instance are from the second book) before picking up this one is recommended, though not mandatory.

The Story Of The Lost Child

By Elena Ferrante

Translated by Ann Goldstein

Published by: Europa

Pages: 473