Book Review: The Story of the Lost Child is subtitled Maturity, Old Age. The culmination of the four books. In each book, something new strikes me about the depths of these novels. How political they are, for one thing. Also, none of Ferrante's narrative is wasted. Every scene has meaning for some later moment. Incidents in the earlier books reach fruition in The Story of the Lost Child. Events from the past always recur; actions in childhood become reactions in adulthood. The differences in the childhoods of the various characters later lead to their political and social views, such as whether they're fascist or communist and their attitudes towards the treatment of women and the proper response to such treatment. The immense detail of these novels shows the importance of the elements of women's lives, as equal to that of men's lives. Ferrante's novels make me think of names such as Proust, Tolstoy, Trollope. The Story of the Lost Child, like the other novels, is an easy and quick read, but always many-layered with writing that is powerful and magical. The ending of this book, and the series, was just the ending it had to be, coming full circle with the first pages of the first novel. But as Ferrante has said, this is really a single 1700 page novel. What is revealed is the staggering complexity of the bond ("friendship" is too weak a word) between Elena and Lina, and the impressive complexity of the four volumes of the novel. She has also said that she loved most writing the first and fourth novels, and it shows as the beginning and end, the alpha and omega of the story, complete the circle. I think Elena Ferrante is the brilliant friend. [5★]
Fabulous insights as always! So glad you loved this series. These novels are so layered and rewarding, and what struck me most about the last book was what it said about the collective nature of storytelling—yes, Elena is The Writer throughout this series, but she is also sometimes just a filter for the stories and voices of Naples and Lila in particular...but of course, these books are all skewed by Elena's perspective and suggest the other texts that are buried beneath this one (the most enticing being Lila's and the stories she never told/wrote)...I was thinking about this a lot at the end of the book, when Lila has disappeared without a trace and even people in the neighborhood (younger generations) don't really remember her...that thread of untold, forgotten, and lost stories (the ones thrown into the Arno River in Pisa in Book 2, for example) made a deep impression on me.
ReplyDeleteGreat point! The Neapolitan Novels do make an important commentary about story telling -- Ferrante obviously has thought deeply about the subject (as in Frantumaglia). A PhD thesis could be written on story telling in the books. Thanks for the great comment!
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