Tuesday, October 25, 2016

The Story of the Lost Child: The Fourth and final Neapolitan Novel / Elena Ferrante, trans. Ann Goldstein, 473 p.

Elena returns to Naples with her children.  She returns for a man, but in the end stays for Lila, as she takes a flat in Lila's building.  We see the two women go through the ordinary events of middle age -  raising children, burying parents, drifting away from lovers - and the not-so-ordinary - the murder of childhood friends, the continued impact of organized crime on day-to-day life, and the disappearance of a child.  There are unsolved mysteries here that pull you through the text.  In the end, Elena and Lila felt like my friends, and I hated to say good-bye to them.  An especially gorgeous ending.

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