Elena Ferrante

Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, this story of a lifelong friendship is told with unmatched honesty. Lila and Elena clash, drift apart, reconcile, and clash again, in the process revealing new facets of their friendship.

The Story of the Lost Child

Only in bad novels people always think the right thing, always say the right thing, every effect has its cause, there are the likable ones and the unlikable, the good and the bad, everything in the end consoles you.

So much fuss about the greatness of this one and that one, but what virtue is there in being born with certain qualities, it's like admiring the bingo basket when you shake it and good numbers come out. 

He had a curiosity about the world of women that was genuine. But this I knew very well by now—he didn't in the least resemble the men who in those years made a show of giving up at least a few of their privileges. I thought not only of professors, architects, artists who came to our house and displayed a sort of feminization of behaviors, feelings, opinions; but also of Carmen's husband, Roberto, who was really helpful, and Enzo, who with no hesitation would have sacrificed all his time to Lila's needs. Nino was sincerely interested in how women found themselves. There was no dinner at which he did not repeat that to think 

 them was now the only way to a true thought. But he held tight to his spaces and his numerous activities, he put first of all, always and only, himself, he didn't give up an instant of his time.

this is like the part in #3 where she talks about her relationship with Lila as the knight & the shepherd

We took refuge in us as if in shining armour. 

For him only the two of us counted. Remember that we're here, now, together, he said, the rest is background and will change.

We woke up happy to have slept together: ah, it was wonderful to stretch out a foot and discover, after the unconsciousness of sleep, that he was there in the bed, beside me.

Sad to be done with this excellent series. 

Tom Koss

Rocío de la Hera

No me voy a recuperar jamás de esta saga. Insuperable.

Eva Ströberg

Elena Ferrante - The story of a lost child
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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The last book of the series is truly mindblowing. I thought that it was impossible to prop more drama in Lenu & Lila’s lives but obviously it was. This book is so explosive, full of happenings, life defining moments, story of friendship between two (now) older women that is full with conflicts and tough love.
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Lenu was back in Naples after her separation with her husband, and Lila was still living with Enzo and her son Gennaro, but the world around them, the Naples that they knew were slowly dissolving, yet still remain the same. Same people, the Solaras, the Caraccis, the Pelusos and of course Nino, Alfonso and Carmen.
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It’s really a gripping book, and once I finally finished it, I didn’t know whether I should feel sad that the story came to an end or a relief for the exact same reason. Brilliant indeed.

Shivam

Among the most overwhelming reading experiences I've had.

The Neapolitan Novels chronicle the growing (and ageing) of two friends - Elena and Lila, in a Naples neighborhood plagued by violence and the usual ugliness of small towns, narrated by the singularly honest protagonist Elena Greco. The first book lays down the mythology of the neighborhood, with its rich array of characters, places, grudges and feuds. The second and third are harder to summarize because they travel through a larger part of Elena's and Lila's adulthood, covering a wider range of events. 

The 4th, and last, book is, in essence, about decay. Being the last in the series, it concludes all the storylines - and the nature of these conclusions is something that interested me. It's fiction, you would be forgiven for expecting a dramatic end to many of these narrative threads, and you wouldn't be disappointed - there is a fair amount of 'loud'-ness here. But what interests me more is the simplicity of the rest. It has the same effect as looking at the places you grew up in every few years and realizing how the monuments of your adolescence have ceased to exist. The grocery store you probably went to a couple hundred times is not there anymore, either (simply) because the owner died or moved away with his family.

The first book perfectly built the tiny eccentricities of a neighborhood, from the people and their habits to the power structures and the oppression they cause. And the last one pulls it all down and replaces it with things that are neither familiar to Elena, nor us. 

What's easily the most interesting dynamic in these books is right at the center - the tumultuous friendship between Elena and Lila. A tangled mess with a beginning but no end, it's what dictates so many of the paths Elena takes both as a child and as an adult. It's the source of her insecurities, but, partly, also of her confidence. While she lays down every little facet of her personality, we are only privy to little glimpses into Lila's psyche. Does it serve to give Lila the larger-than-life aura she assumes by the end of the books? It's possible. It's also likely that she is just a sack carrying the same emotions as Elena, and it's only the latter's memory that serves to decorate her brilliant friend with countless superpowers. I believe there's more evidence to the contrary.

Lila really does emerge from the pages as an extraordinary person, capable of extraordinary things - some of which she accomplishes, most of which are wasted away. And in a tale full of tragedies, this is the most recurring and one of the most hurtful. It's a likely explanation for the parts of Lila's personality that sting and bite - the fact that she was never really given a chance and always had to make the best of circumstances on her own. This is also the most precise example of the brutal realism of The Neapolitan Novels, one that drags everyone and everything, even someone like Lila, down to routine violence of the Naples written in these pages.

Now that I'm writing this review, I can appreciate just how dense these books are. There are so many of those tiny storylines that just separate, merge and separate again from the central thread of Elena, only to reach a simple conclusion that's more often than not forced by death. One of these storylines I just have to put down in my review is the role of Elena's schoolteacher Maestra Oliviero in Elena's pursuit for education. She occupies a good part of the first book but only a slice of the latter three. Yet the echo of her presence - and by extension - the impact of Elena's primary education, is felt until the very end. And that's the nature of things - you can't really pull yourself away from your childhood. But to have it presented this way certainly helped me appreciate just how these enduring these echoes can be.

It's a piece of work that I'll struggle to untangle myself from - having found so much of myself in here, I'm sure it will continue to enter my mind for a long time. Maybe sometime later I'll have even more in common with Elena and Naples than I do now.

“Nothing quite like this has ever been published before,” proclaimed The Guardian newspaper about the Neapolitan Novels in 2014. The first book in the series, My Brilliant Friend, was a New York Times bestseller. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay was a Times bestseller and Notable Book of the Year, and was named a best book of 2014 twenty-five times including in The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New Statesman, Slate, The Daily Beast, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and the Boston Globe. This fourth and final installment in the series gives validation to the New York Times Book Review’s opinion of its author, Elena Ferrante, as “one of the great novelists of our time.” Here is the dazzling saga of two women, the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults; life’s great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women’s friendship has remained the gravitational center of their lives. Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up—a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final book, she has returned to Naples. Lila, on the other hand, never succeeded in freeing herself from the city of her birth. 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. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable! Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, the story of a lifelong friendship is told with unmatched honesty and brilliance. The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and every return will bring with it new revelations.

Lindy

The rating is less reflective of this particular volume and more of the series as a whole, as I think it would be most accurate to talk about The Neopolitan Novels as one novel in four volumes.

Many people more qualified than me have written reams about the richness and complexity of this work; all I have to contribute is that it forced me to appreciate maximalism for what I think is the first time ever.

A brilliant conclusion to a brilliant series; the Neapolitan Novels have certainly changed my life and altered my mind forever. Now in both Elena and Lina I see parts of myself, I see pieces of the portrait that depicts womanhood. Oftentimes our dearest friends end up being our greatest vices; we either convince ourselves we're better than them, or we try to mould ourselves into them: to become one. Why must womanhood be so complicated? Why must we have to constantly compare and compete with each other? What is the true meaning of being a woman, the true intricacies of female friendship, of love, of exploration and resolution? If only we could be honest with ourselves. And yet, it's a story that replicates itself through decades, a story of two friends who wish to become each other, or perhaps; become one, create a world of their own. Where they precede their own daughters, named by their mothers, playing together and growing old side by side.

A tearful end to an unforgettable journey, Lila and Lenù will always remain in my heart, or perhaps in my shoulders as an angel and devil, and will lead me to embrace the world, myself, and make decisions with my renewed mind.

Thank you Elena Ferrante for this lifechanging gift. A must-read for every woman in their early twenties.

deniz

A brilliant conclusion to a brilliant series; the Neapolitan Novels have certainly changed my life and altered my mind forever. Now in both Elena and Lina I see parts of myself, I see pieces of the portrait that depicts womanhood. Oftentimes our dearest friends end up being our greatest vices; we either convince ourselves we're better than them, or we try to mould ourselves into them: to become one. Why must womanhood be so complicated? Why must we have to constantly compare and compete with each other? What is the true meaning of being a woman, the true intricacies of female friendship, of love, of exploration and resolution? If only we could be honest with ourselves. And yet, it's a story that replicates itself through decades, a story of two friends who wish to become each other, or perhaps; become one, create a world of their own. Where they precede their own daughters, named by their mothers, playing together and growing old side by side.

A tearful end to an unforgettable journey, Lila and Lenù will always remain in my heart, or perhaps in my shoulders as an angel and devil, and will lead me to embrace the world, myself, and make decisions with my renewed mind.

Thank you Elena Ferrante for this lifechanging gift. A must-read for every woman in their early twenties.

kayla 

Claudia Beneyto

The most incredibly moving, beautiful, heart-breaking, jaw-dropping, gut-wrenching, addictive series I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

Julia Lundberg 

4,5 
Lila & Lenú, och Neapel. Jag kommer sakna er.

Madison Storm

Wow. I no longer know what to do with myself now that I have finished this series.

I am not sure how to summarise my feelings about finishing this series altogether. I was always angry when the men in these women's lives would be doing the most to hurt them and always immersed in Lenu's obsession with Lila when the narration snapped back into focus on them (though even at her most removed from Lila, Lenu would always - 

 - consider what she would have said or done, if she would insist it otherwise).

Instead here is a thought that occurred to me while I was finishing the novel today: Contemporary literature loves unapologetically messy women as some sort of somber reflection of the real world or exploration of the "female psyche", it thinks them compelling 

. And that narrative always - whether intended or not - seeks to pass judgement on them. More often than not, it also sneaks in a bad ending for them and presents it as a consequence, though it is always some random circumstance that leads to it. Or when it lets them get away with the actions that it has unintentionally labeled as bad, that would be a good ending, a reward of sorts - which feels bizarrely unearned.

However, Elena Ferrante has mastered the art of showing the lives of messy women without passing judgement on them. She has a great ability for making the reader so entirely immersed in their lives that invites understanding. Like damn, Lenu's love interest was an absolute piece of garbage and I was starting to become violent and I both sided with Lila and could understand why Lenu could not leave him. How many authors can say they have accomplished such complete fusion between reader and narrator?

And so, inevitably, leaving this series felt like it was my own relationship with a friend that was ending. And it was so well shaped and paced that it truly felt like the ending of an era, the ending of a life.

I am not sure how to summarise my feelings about finishing this series altogether. I was always angry when the men in these women's lives would be doing the most to hurt them and always immersed in Lenu's obsession with Lila when the narration snapped back into focus on them (though even at her most removed from Lila, Lenu would always - always - consider what she would have said or done, if she would insist it otherwise).

Instead here is a thought that occurred to me while I was finishing the novel today: Contemporary literature loves unapologetically messy women as some sort of somber reflection of the real world or exploration of the "female psyche", it thinks them compelling by default. And that narrative always - whether intended or not - seeks to pass judgement on them. More often than not, it also sneaks in a bad ending for them and presents it as a consequence, though it is always some random circumstance that leads to it. Or when it lets them get away with the actions that it has unintentionally labeled as bad, that would be a good ending, a reward of sorts - which feels bizarrely unearned.

However, Elena Ferrante has mastered the art of showing the lives of messy women without passing judgement on them. She has a great ability for making the reader so entirely immersed in their lives that invites understanding. Like damn, Lenu's love interest was an absolute piece of garbage and I was starting to become violent and I both sided with Lila and could understand why Lenu could not leave him. How many authors can say they have accomplished such complete fusion between reader and narrator?

And so, inevitably, leaving this series felt like it was my own relationship with a friend that was ending. And it was so well shaped and paced that it truly felt like the ending of an era, the ending of a life.

Vaishali Batra

Ozge Kara

I read the whole series in one go and... It was truly a journey and what a journey it was. I am tired, I feel tired. Not because I read 1600 pages in three months but I feel like I lived three lifetimes in three months: Elena’s, Lila’s, mine.

The Story Of The Lost Child

Inkmelt

An all encompassing exploration on how people change and grow against and with one another, as well as how the life of the mind changes as the body ages.

An absolutely extraordinary series. An epic tale that I will without a doubt return to again ♥️

Brianna Santina

Amy Thibodeau

The third and last book in this fantastic trilogy. I'll miss Lila and Elena and can see myself revisiting these books again.

tina

i fear i will be thinking about this book until the day i die

Hellboy TCR

After the ups and downs of Book 3, Ferrante lifts her writing to a compelling level in this final book of the series. She is astonishing at times and even though there are so many (far too many if you asked me) things happening in the book - when the narration calms down and really focuses on the internal turmoil of the characters Ferrante is at her best - the most memorable moments are two deaths, one of her ex and another her mom - i will remember this book esp for those 2 scenes, among other things.

Mounir Bashour

The ending left me a bit unsatisfied but they were really good books.

Emma Friedheim

Whew. This book (and the whole series) is heartbreakingly beautiful, and unlike anything I've ever read. The violently personal (stealing that phrase from a New Yorker piece) voice is both refreshing and deeply unsettling. I'm sure many writers have tried to achieve such a tone but I don't think I've ever read anything which as much clarity and conviction of character as I found in the mind of Elena Greco. Such a comprehensive portrait of a woman. I'm now fully convinced that the story is mostly autobiographical, but whether fact or fiction it is brilliant. I can't believe it's over. 

(and now for some lovely quotes from Ms. Ferrante)

"I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors."

"Friendship is a crucible of positive and negative feelings that are in a permanent state of ebullition."

"In general, we store away our experiences and make use of timeworn phrases—nice, ready-made, reassuring stylizations that give us a sense of colloquial normality. But in this way, either knowingly or unknowingly, we reject everything that, to be said fully, would require effort and a torturous search for words. Honest writing forces itself to find words for those parts of our experience that is crouched and silent."

"Often that which we are unable to tell ourselves coincides with that which we do not want to tell, and if a book offers us a portrait of those things, we feel annoyed, or resentful, because they are things we all know, but reading about them disturbs us. However, the opposite also happens. We are thrilled when fragments of reality become utterable."

"Searching to unravel things is useful, but literature is made out of tangles."

Also everyone go read this interview with Elena Ferrante: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/201... (or maybe wait until you've read the books).

Angbeen Abbas

my fave book is still #3, but god, this was so sad and so beautiful and i'm going to think about this series forever. i feel so sad now that it's over :(

Kwan Ann Tan

I can't believe this series has changed my life, it was so good and I am so glad I read it

Robin M Cabana

I've never read about friendship between women that's so powerful and true as in Elena Ferrante's series. The bond between Elena and Lila over decades ranges from loving and joyful to strained and raw to sentimental and strange. They are strong, intellectual and interesting women who defy expectations over the years as their story unfolds amid violence and political upheaval in Naples. But I also just really love the large cast of side characters - relatives, schoolmates, neighborhood fixtures - who bring humor and shocking twists at time to the story. It's fascinating and beautifully written and deserving of all the praise I've read about this series. (I listened to the audiobook versions of this series.)

Kathleen Mullins

It's hard to describe why I love this series so much but this book left me with the same sort of comfort & sense of immersion as the last three. This book started slower than the second and third but it had the same feeling of truly being Elena, seeing the world through her eyes. One thing that I love about this story is how clearly you can see the world through Elena's eyes, and you can imagine that her perspective is skewed by her experiences and personality, that her relationship with Lila and her daughters probably looks different from another angle, but you are immersed in feeling the world as she feels it. I also really felt for the internal comparisons she made to Lila, to make herself feel superior or worthy. I think it was a perfect and relatable portrayal of how a woman can create her own obstacles/devalue herself and her accomplishments out of fear. I haven't read another book that creates these feelings so successfully. Overall I'd give my journey with this series 5/5 stars.

The Story of the Lost Child

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