The Story of the Lost Child: Elena Ferrante (Neapolitan Quartet, 4) Paperback – 13 Aug. 2020

It's hard to define exactly what makes the Neapolitan Quartet such an extraordinary achievement, and such a compelling experience for the reader; now sadly at an end with the publication of the final novel in the series (though these are books that demand repeated re-reading). On the face of it an extended bildungsroman, in fact the novels constitute something much deeper and more complex. The genius of Elena Ferrante, however, is to subvert a familiar genre in an utterly naturalistic and unselfconscious way; teasing allusions to previous incidents and elusive insights into things only half-said are weaved in to the relentless narrative with such profound subtlety that suggests the real mystery about Ferrante is whether she is some kind of psychological savant, or simply one of the most skillful novelists there has ever been. Credit must presumably also go to Ann Goldstein for preserving these delicate nuances in the English translation. This, the final book in the quartet, maintains the same position; there is no grand denouement or final twist as might have been expected, and as many novelists would no doubt have employed. For Ferrante, you feel, such a conclusion would be psychologically dishonest, and so the ending is enigmatic and in some ways unsatisfying - another example of her disregarding standard literary tropes in favour of an unflinching realism.Ultimately this is a series of novels about relationship and identity, and how we construct the former in the context of the latter. The friendship between Lenu and Lina is endlessly fascinating; what is the significance of the lifelong symbiosis in which they seem to alternate between the roles of host and parasite, rarely achieving an equilibrium? As a young woman, Elena makes her name assailing the conventional oppressions of gender and class which she believes constrain her ability to forge a different identity. But she is in fact Lina's creation; and throughout their lives Lenu defines herself in relation to Lina's expectations: sometimes striving to meet them; sometimes rebelling against; sometimes able to transcend for short periods; but always returning to the roles established in childhood. Ultimately, it seems that the final, unspoken, question for Lenu is whether she can reconstruct herself in the absence of Lina.Of course, the significance of identity as a central theme is made even more intriguing by the mystery surrounding Ferrante's herself. Personally, I have no difficulty accepting her stated reasons for wishing to preserve her anonymity, and I don't think it's necessary to infer from it that the Neapolitan novels are autobiographical. If Lenu 'is' Ferrante, then the autobiographical element must be pretty loose, otherwise her identity could be easily uncovered. But if there is an element of autobiography, surely it is more likely that Ferrante is in fact Lila? After all, the sentiment "once written, books have no further need of their authors" is heard far more readily in Lila's voice than Elena's. If so,' Lila''s authorship of the novels in the assumed voice of Lenu would represent the ultimate manifestation of their enmeshed identities. But that's the joy of these books; Ferrante disdains neat explanations, so the reader is left with endless possibilities to ponder.

After four volumes, the story of Elena and Lila reaches its end - and what a magnificent achievement it is by Ferrante!One of the few books that puts female friendship absolutely at its heart, it also effortlessly embraces both page-turner status and something more 'literary'. The poor neighbourhood of Naples in which the girls grow up and live, which is almost another character in the books, here, finally, becomes a microcosm of the world: 'Naples wasn't the only irredeemable city... the entire planet, she said, is a big Fosso Carbonario'.While concentrating closely on the central relationship between Elena and wild, brilliant, uncontainable Lila, Ferrante also draws intimate portraits of female lives during the latter half of the twentieth-century and into the twenty-first: questions of love, marriage, motherhood, careers, subjectivity, female bodies, sex, illness, death intertwine with larger questions about social justice and equality, about political corruption and power ('the exploitation of man by man and the logic of maximum profit, which before had been considered an abomination, had returned to become the linchpins of freedom and democracy everywhere').But this never becomes polemic and, at the surface level, Ferrante's story-telling is tremendous: without offering up inane 'twists', she still manages to hit us with sudden revelations, revealing the secrets that have been acted out before our eyes that neither Elena, our narrator, nor we have seen.So the moving ending to what has been an intense quartet: not only am I desperate to read everything else that Ferrante has written, but I'll certainly be re-reading these Neapolitan novels again.

I enjoyed my brilliant friend and though I didn't quite enjoy this book as much. It was still a good read as I knew most of the characters from the my brilliant friend.

I have not read something this good for a very long time - the four books that comprise to be 'the Neopolitan series' by Elena Ferrante are mesmerising. I have read the various negative comments on this review page and I would like to question why people persevere reading this superior work by Ferrante when they say in their reviews that they were already fed up by book 2? So they read 2 more books only to write nasty comments ? Weird....... Well if you are about to start the series all I can add is that I learnt so much from these books - I learnt about Italian society and culture and ideas - I learnt about friendship and a particular identity of friendship between two unique women - I learnt about family , blood ties , Italian Mafia within the workings of Italian society and politics - I learnt about complex relationships between men and women and children and friends and family and most of all I enjoyed the challenge of discovering all this from Ferrante's writing. People complain about these books , find fault and savage the writer - it's laughably arrogant of them! The Neopolitan novels are remarkable in their depth and revealing the complexity of human relationship. The books convey so many themes within the context of Italian society - it's a gift for non Italian people to be able to discover this from the novels - I found that Ferrante provides access to understanding a closed society for most of us - the translation is impeccable . Yet arrogant people chose to complain about these books - and yet they couldn't write such a work in a month of Sunday's ! They fail to recognise the gift and the brilliance - I hope Ferrante could write a 5th and final because for me there is still a missing part of the jigsaw .