write a book review on the lost child
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Shelves: audiobooks , italy , modern-fiction
This novel nearly broke me.
The Story of the Lost Child is beautifully heartbreaking. It is the culmination of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan series, and it wraps up the story of two friends, Elena and Lila. I spent my summer with these two women. I read the first book, My Brilliant Friend, just to see what all the Ferrante Fever fuss was about, and I didn't expect to read any more of the series. But I ended up intrigued and wanting more, and I gobbled up Books 2 and 3 as quickly as I could.
In this fourth book, Elena has run away from her marriage to Pietro and has a passionate affair with Nino, the boy she has loved since childhood. Lila is opposed to the affair, and the women's friendship becomes even more strained. Meanwhile, Elena's writing career has ups and downs, and Lila becomes entangled in the underground politics of their old neighborhood in Naples.
It is hard to explain to someone who hasn't read Ferrante why these novels are so powerful. On the surface, they sound like any other domestic drama — two women living their lives, experiencing love and loss, going through the highs and lows of marriage and parenthood.
But it's not that simple. Their lives are so well-drawn, their emotions and experiences are so real, and the history and neighborhoods of Italy are so well-described that this book feels more like an autobiography than a novel. The Ferrante books are rich in the same way that Tolstoy's novels are a feast. To paraphrase an Internet meme, One does not simply read a Ferrante book. One lives it.