The Story of the Lost Child - (Neapolitan Novels) by Elena Ferrante (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A BEST BOOK OF THE CENTURY - NEW YORK TIMES

The "stunning conclusion" to the bestselling saga of the fierce lifelong bond between two women, from a gritty Naples childhood through old age (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

The Story of the Lost Child concludes the dazzling saga of two women, the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila, who first met amid the shambles of postwar Italy. In this book, life's great discoveries have been made; its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women's friendship remains the gravitational center of their lives.

Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. But now, she has returned to Naples to be with the man she has always loved. Lila, on the other hand, never succeeded in freeing herself from Naples. 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. Yet, somehow, this proximity to a world she has always rejected only brings her role as unacknowledged leader of that world into relief.

"Lila is a magnificent character."--The Atlantic

"Everyone should read anything with Ferrante's name on it." --The Boston Globe

Review Quotes

A BEST BOOK OF THE CENTURY - NEW YORK TIMES

FINALIST FOR THE 2016 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
TIME Magazine・The New York Times Book Review・People Magazine・Wall Street Journal

"The conclusion of Ferrante's four-book saga defies the laws of diminishing returns, illuminating the twined psychologies of its central pair--intractable, indelible, inseparable--in one last blast of X-ray prose."--The New York Times, A Best Book of the 21st Century

"It's spectacular, but you will only realize how spectacular The Story of the Lost Child is if you do not cheat. You must read the three earlier (also superb) Neapolitan Novels or the perfect devastation wrought by the conclusion of this last novel will be lost on you."--Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

"It is the exploration of the women's mental underworld that makes the book so singular an achievement in feminist literature; indeed, in all literature."--Joan Acocella, The New Yorker

"This is Ferrante at the height of her brilliance."--Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

"Ms. Ferrante has in fact, for more than 20 years, written about female identity with a heft and sharpness unmatched by anyone since Doris Lessing."--The Wall Street Journal

"What words do you save? Here's your chance to bring them out, like the silver for the wedding of the first-born: genius, tour de force, masterpiece. They apply to the work of Elena Ferrante, whose newly translated novel The Story of the Lost Child is the fourth and final one of her magnificent Neapolitan quartet, a sequence which now seems to me, at least within all that I've read, to be the greatest achievement in fiction of the post-war era."--Charles Finch, The Chicago Tribune

"We are dealing with masterpieces here, old-fashioned classics, filled with passion and pathos...The sheer power of her books is a challenge to the chilly, dour craftsmanship of too many 21st century literary novels."--Joe Klein, TIME Magazine

"The saga is both comfortingly traditional and radically fresh, it gives readers not just what they want, but something more than they didn't know they craved...through this fusion of high and low art, Ms. Ferrante emerges as a 21st-century Dickens."--The Economist

"Ferrante's accomplishment in these novels is to extract an enduring masterpiece from dissolving margins, from the commingling of self and other, creator and created, new and old, real and whatever the opposite of real may be...Ferrante's voice is very much her own, but its force is communal. Perhaps her quartet should be seen as one of the first great works of post-authorial literature."--Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic

"With The Story of the Lost Child Ferrante has written what I'd call a "city book," a knowing and complex tale that encompasses an entire metropolis. The breadth of vision makes this final installment feel like the essential volume."--John Domini, The Washington Post

★ "This stunning conclusion further solidifies the Neapolitan novels as Ferrante's masterpiece."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

★ "Ferrante has created a mythic portrait of a female friendship in the chthonian world of postwar Naples."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

★ "Word of mouth launched this series, glowing reviews helped, and, eventually, a publishing phenomenon was born. The series' conclusion is a genuine literary event."--Booklist (starred review)

PRAISE FOR ELENA FERRANTE AND THE NEAPOLITAN NOVELS

"A large, captivating, amiably peopled bildungsroman."--James Wood, The New Yorker

"One of modern fiction's richest portraits of a friendship."--John Powers, NPR's Fresh Air

"Elena Ferrante is one of the great novelists of our time."--Roxana Robinson, The New York Times Book Review

"Compelling, visceral and immediate...The Neapolitan novels are a tour de force."--Jennifer Gilmore, The Los Angeles Times

"It took my breath away...so honest and right and opens up heart to so much."--Elizabeth Strout, writer

"The Neapolitan novel cycle is an unconditional masterpiece."--Jhumpa Lahiri, writer

"Everyone should read anything with Ferrante's name on it."--Eugenia Williamson, The Boston Globe

"Ferrante's own writing has no limits, is willing to take every thought forward to its most radical conclusion and backwards to its most radical birthing."---The New Yorker

"One of the more nuanced portraits of feminine friendship in recent memory."--Megan O'Grady, Vogue

"It's just hypnotic. I could not stop reading it or thinking about it."--Hillary Clinton

"Ferrante tackles girlhood and friendship with amazing force."--Gwyneth Paltrow, actor

"Ferrante's writing seems to say something that hasn't been said before in a way so compelling its readers forget where they are, abandon friends and disdain sleep."--Joanna Biggs, The London Review of Books

"Ferrante has written about female identity with a heft and sharpness unmatched by anyone since Doris Lessing."--Elizabeth Lowry, The Wall Street Journal

"No one has a voice quite like Ferrante's. Her gritty, ruthlessly frank novels roar off the page with a barbed fury, like an attack that is also a defense...Imagine if Jane Austen got angry and you'll have some idea of how explosive these works are."--John Freeman, writer

"When I read the Neapolitan novels I find that I never want to stop."--Molly Fischer, The New Yorker

"The saga is both comfortingly traditional and radically fresh, it gives readers not just what they want, but something more than they didn't know they craved...through this fusion of high and low art, Ms. Ferrante emerges as a 21st-century Dickens."--The Economist

"Ferrante adumbrates the mysterious beauty and brutality of personal experience."--Rachel Cusk, The New York Times Book Review

"Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet is the first genuine literary classic of the 21st century."--The Huffington Post

About the Author

Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), which was made into a film directed by Roberto Faenza, Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), adapted by Mario Martone, and The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), soon to be a film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. She is also the author of a Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey (Europa, 2016) in which she recounts her experience as a novelist, and a children's picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night (Europa, 2016). The four volumes known as the "Neapolitan quartet" (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) were published in America by Europa between 2012 and 2015. The first season of the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, directed by Severio Costanzo premiered in 2018.
Ann Goldstein is an editor at The New Yorker. Her translations for Europa Editions include novels by Amara Lakhous, Alessandro Piperno, and Elena Ferrante's bestselling My Brilliant Friend. She lives in New York.