Reading guide: The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein

The fourth volume of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, a dazzling saga of a friendship between two women: brilliant, bookish Elena and fiery, uncontainable Lila. Having moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books, Elena returns to her home city to be with the man she has always loved. Lila, on the other hand, never freed herself from Naples. And her entrepreneurial success only draws her into closer contact with the nepotism, criminal violence and inviolable taboos that infect her neighbourhood. The Story of the Lost Child was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2016. 

Elena Ferrante was born in Naples. This is all we know about her.

True to her belief that ‘books, once they are written, have no need of their authors’, Ferrante has stayed resolutely out of public view. She is the author of The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, and The Lost Daughter. Her Neapolitan Quartet includes My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child. She is also the author of Frantumaglia, a collection of writings on reading, writing and absence.

Alex Clark, The Guardian

‘Ferrante has moved into more overtly psychological territory. A portrait of the dynamic of a friendship has mutated into a weightier, more uncanny exploration of the antipathy of love, of our compulsion to create one another, over and over again.’

Rachel Cusk, The New York Times Sunday Book Review

‘In Elena and Lila, Ferrante’s modern woman is bisected and given two faces; where in her other works the divided woman speaks to and wrestles with herself, the Neapolitan series externalizes and literalizes those politics to show their almost insurmountable complexity.’

Megan O’Grady, Vogue

‘Ferrante’s importance ultimately lies not in her masterly plotting, her no-false-note sentences, but in her dedication to the bloodletting truth of a woman’s experience, set free, as the author herself has said in interviews, by her chosen anonymity.’

Roseann Lloyd, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

‘Fiction like this is not often written: the friendship of two girls becoming women in the context of their culture, a poverty-stricken neighborhood of Naples in postwar Italy, with all its superstitions, politics, corruption, sexism and violence.’

Anna Mundow, The Barnes & Noble Review

‘In its breadth and sweep, Ferrante’s series has also been compared to the work of Balzac and Dickens. But her affinity with such writers is most evident in the depth of Ferrante’s psychological insight; the creation of interior lives so vivid that we seem to breathe along with her characters, from moment to moment.’

Elena Ferrante famously writes under a pseudonym and has always kept her identity secret. She has said ‘I believe that books, once written, have no need of their authors.’ This statement can be linked to the Death of the Author literary theory introduced by philosopher Roland Barthes, which suggests the meaning of the text is derived not from the author’s intention but from the collective interpretation gained from readers. Do you agree with this view? How does not knowing anything about its author shape your reading experience of this book?

The two main characters, Lenù and Lila, grow from young girls to older adults across the four novels within the Neapolitan Quartet, of which The Story of the Lost Child is the final installment. Reflecting on the character arcs of the two women throughout the series, and their often complex friendship, what notable changes do you observe, both in themselves and their relationship with each other? 

The Italian city of Naples has been described by readers and reviewers as being almost a character in its own right within Ferrante’s work, with her vivid descriptions highlighting the unruly temperament of the city, its criminal undercurrents and political unrest. With Lila never leaving the city and Lenù ultimately returning, why do you think this setting is such an important aspect of the story?

Lenù decides to leave her husband and children in Florence to return to Naples to be with her lover, Nino. Even after discovering he hasn’t left his wife and his constant womanising behaviour, she still stays. It’s not until she’s faced directly with his actions that she leaves for good. Why do you think Lenù decided to stay with Nino despite his repeated indiscretions? 

Many theories surround the disappearance of Lila’s daughter, Tina. Some believe that the Solaras brothers abducted Tina in retaliation for a disparaging article that Lenù and Lila wrote about them, whereas another theory suggests that Lila sent Tina away to grow up in better circumstances, outside of Naples. Why do you think Ferrante left the disappearance unresolved and what do you think might have happened to Tina?

Lila uses the term ‘dissolving boundaries’ to describe a condition that she feels within herself, where ‘the outlines of things and people were delicate, that they broke like cotton thread […] it had always been that way, an object lost its edges and poured into another, into a solution of heterogeneous materials, a merging and mixing’. Some readers have interpreted this as a psychological condition, such as derealisation or depersonalisation. What was your interpretation of that passage when reading it?

Lenù mentioned that her sister-in-law Mariarosa theorises ‘that a woman without love for her origins is lost’. (Page 104). What do you think Mariarosa meant by this statement? 

The meaning of the two dolls that were given to Lenù at the end of the story is open to interpretation. Several theories have been put forward; some readers suggest the dolls symbolise Lila severing ties with Lenù by returning them to her, while others suggest they are a message that Lila is okay. What was your interpretation of Lila’s gesture?

Many of the men in the series are unlikeable, often exhibiting traits such as selfishness, betrayal, or violence. However, Enzo is an exception. What qualities make Enzo different from the other male characters, and why might Ferrante have chosen to contrast him so sharply with the others?

Writing in the New Yorker, critic Joan Acocella called the Neapolitan Quartet ‘the most thoroughgoing feminist novel I have ever read’, referring to the four books as one unified novel. Discuss which aspects of the story you believe mark it as a pivotal example of feminist literature.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein

The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated by Oonagh Stransky