Book Four of the Neapolitan Novels: Maturity, Old Age
eBook, 480 pages
English language
Published Oct. 1, 2015 by Europa Editions.
Elena Ferrante‘s The Story of the Lost Child is the concluding volume in the dazzling saga of two women—the brilliant, bookish Elena, and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults with husbands, lovers, aging parents, and children. Their friendship has been the gravitational center of their lives. Both women 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 novel, she has returned to Naples, drawn back as if responding to the city’s obscure magnetism. Lila, on the other hand, could never free herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into close proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect the neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her …
Elena Ferrante‘s The Story of the Lost Child is the concluding volume in the dazzling saga of two women—the brilliant, bookish Elena, and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults with husbands, lovers, aging parents, and children. Their friendship has been the gravitational center of their lives. Both women 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 novel, she has returned to Naples, drawn back as if responding to the city’s obscure magnetism. Lila, on the other hand, could never free herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into close proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect the 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. --elenaferrante.com
What a set of books the "Neapolitan novels" by Elena Ferrante are! Took a break after the 1st one but couldn't stop reading the next 3 when I picked it up again. Going to miss the characters. They really are one giant novel.
A couple of months ago, I finished this book and started writing this review. Now I have come back to finish it and here's what I find:
Four books ago, Lila disappeared prompting Lenu to write about it. Now, in the epilogue of book 4, she admits defeat. "What is the point of all these pages then? I wanted to capture her. To have her beside me once again."
Now that I've finished reading, the boundaries have disolved. Can't I just go back and start over with them? Can I have them beside me once again?
Unlike books, real life inclines toward obscuity, not clarity.
So that's what I wrote last December. I can no longer distinguish between what I was saying and what I was quoting. I was immersed at the time. When I say "boundaries desolved" I was either quoting or referring to Lila's use of the phrase …
A couple of months ago, I finished this book and started writing this review. Now I have come back to finish it and here's what I find:
Four books ago, Lila disappeared prompting Lenu to write about it. Now, in the epilogue of book 4, she admits defeat. "What is the point of all these pages then? I wanted to capture her. To have her beside me once again."
Now that I've finished reading, the boundaries have disolved. Can't I just go back and start over with them? Can I have them beside me once again?
Unlike books, real life inclines toward obscuity, not clarity.
So that's what I wrote last December. I can no longer distinguish between what I was saying and what I was quoting. I was immersed at the time. When I say "boundaries desolved" I was either quoting or referring to Lila's use of the phrase but that is a sort of immersion experience. These are books that take you over for a while and when you are released, you feel the loss of the experience. You become like Lenu without Lila. You have obscurity without clarity.
I could try and clarify now, using the simplification of distance which is partly illusion--the result of forgetting the details. But the loss is the point, isn't it? Or part of the point. The truth is I can't even clarify now.
