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Neapolitan Novels, Book Four
"This stunning conclusion further solidifies the Neapolitan novels as Ferrante's masterpiece."
"Nothing quite like this has ever been published before," proclaimed The Guardian newspaper about the Neapolitan Novels in 2014. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, the third book in the series, was an international best seller and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Its author was dubbed "one of the great novelists of our time" by the New York Times Book Review. This fourth and final installment in the series raises the bar even higher and indeed confirms Elena Ferrante as one of the world's best living storytellers.
Here is the dazzling saga of two women, the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery uncontainable Lila. In this book, both are adults; life's great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women's friendship, examined in its every detail over the course of four books, remains 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. 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. 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, 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 four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and, like Elena and Lila themselves, every return will bring with it new discoveries.
What's your favorite book series?
Elena Ferrante: Neapolitan Series. My Brilliant Friend (1). The Story of a New Name (2). Those who Leave and those who Stay (3). The Story of the Lost Child (4)
-Patricia_R
"Starred Review. This stunning conclusion further solidifies the Neapolitan novels as Ferrante's masterpiece." - Publishers Weekly
"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. Ferrante has created a mythic portrait of a female friendship in the chthonian world of postwar Naples." - Kirkus Reviews
"In the fourth and final of the reclusive global publishing sensation's Neapolitan novels, we return to Naples and to the tumultuous friendship of Lila Cerullo and Elena Greco." - The Millions
This information about The Story of the Lost Child was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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 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 Saverio Costanzo,...
... Full Biography
Link to Elena Ferrante's Website
Name Pronunciation
Elena Ferrante: EH-leh-nuh feh-RAHN-tay. Rolled "R" in "Ferrante."
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