Book 4: The Story of the Lost Child

Prasad finishes the Ferrante Series

Recently, on a flight, I finished the 4th and final volume of the Neapolitan series by Elena Ferrante. Afterwards, I could only stare out the window, looking across the clouds.

The climax of book 4 is the loss of the child Tina. She disappears one day when Nino comes to visit. Later Enzo would describe the horror of a child who vanishes. A parent is always left wondering if they are alive somewhere— happy or perhaps being tortured— or if, instead, they are dead. Perhaps this is the most painful thing a person can endure— not knowing what happened to the person you love the most.

Then, we watch the denouement of the series, playing out over hundreds of pages. Lila’s growing erratic behavior, the end of her relationship with Enzo, the relationship between Elena’s daughters and her son Rino, and finally, the betrayal— when Elena writes about Tina— and Lila’s retribution— when Lila never speaks to her again.

The two dolls frame the ending. The symbol of childish innocence lost. It’s lost for all of us as we get older.

“Unlike stories, real life, when it has past, inclines towards obscurity, not clarity” Ferrante writes, and indeed, we are left to ponder the meaning of Lila’s gift. Did she find her daughter? Did she forgive her friend? Or is she sending a different message?

The only imperfection in these perfect books is that it was released as 4 volumes. It is a single story, and I wish the publisher had printed it as such— a single tome. Too many people have told me that they didn’t think Book 1 was terrific. Of course, I agree, but the series is perhaps the finest writing of the last quarter century.

In my mind, the real climax of the series is not the loss of Tina, but what happens earlier. When Elena returns ahead of schedule to drop off diapers, and she finds Nino in the bathroom, fucking the elderly, obese nanny against the kitchen sink. He lifts her fat, pendulous breasts and Elena glimpses his skinny legs behind her. Later, even in her grief, she would laugh at that grotesque sight. “He, while he stroked her sex, holding her heavy stomach with his arm, was gripping an enormous breast that stuck out of the smock and the bra, and meanwhile was thrusting his flat stomach against her large white buttocks.”

Nino, who never leaves a woman, but merely acquires another, has a insatiable appetite for women’s bodies. He hates his father because he is much worse than his father. Throughout the book, I was waiting for the moment that Elena would tell him— punish him— with the fact that it was his father who took her virginity, but this moment never occurred. It is one of the rare loose ends of the novels.

Instead, in book 4, we find perhaps the most intriguing analysis, when Elena realizes that of all the women Nino has bed, the only one who did not advance his career aspirations was Lila. She was the only woman with whom his stature would decline. Perhaps the deepest love is when loving someone is ruinous, but you love them anyway.

Who is Elena Ferrante? There is no photo of her. No record of her anywhere. She is a pseudonym, and there is much discussion of who she might be. Having read the books, I suspect the person who wrote them has to be at least in their 50s and 60s but perhaps older. They have spent considerable time in Naples, and have certainly raised children. I suspect they have been married, and had affairs. This is not the work of a 20 year old, but someone who has experienced the miseries and mysteries of adult life.

A few years ago, someone at Ferrante’s publishing house leaked royalty information, and there was a woman, a translator, Anita Raja, who is around the right age, who had a steady increase in payments as the Ferrante books became more popular. But, although she was born in Naples, Raja however was raised in Rome from the age of 3. How could she know so much of it’s culture?

Later, a lexicographic analysis was run and the closest living writer to Ferrante’s style was found to be a man, Domenico Starnone. Domenico did grow up in Naples, and, at 81, he is certainly the right age to have written the novels. Many great novelists are at the peak of their powers in their 50s and 60s (think Roth).

But, here is what is the interesting part of it. Domenico Starnone is married to Anita Raja.

Could a husband and wife have written these books together? In my estimation it would explain so much. First, it explains why the writing from a woman’s point of view is stunningly accurate, but also why the stories pacing and plot are so violent.

Now think for a moment about the two characters. Elena Greco— the girl who had an education who wants to write books that will stand the test of time, books that will be read by generations to come, and Lila Cerrulo, the shoemaker’s daughter, who wants to dissolve into nothing, be lost to the sands of time. Two girls, who grew up in Naples, with different goals and desires.

Greco’s greatest fear happens when her daughter reads stray sentences from her book aloud— the sentences seem trite and dull. Cerrulo’s greatest fear is that she will leave a mark— be traceable or remembered— and these materialize with Greco’s book My Friendship, where Greco betrays her and writes of Tina.

Don’t you see: Elena Ferrante is both Greco and Cerulo. She will be read forever, but also dissolves into nothing. She may not even exist. She may be an invention of a husband and wife, writing together— a relationship more intimate than sex or childrearing. She dissolves into nothing. She is a ghost, and yet, like Homer, and Faulkner, and Joyce, and Cervantes, she will endure for all time.

The wonderous art of Ferrante, the reason the Neopolitan series will always be her best work is that both characters are expression of her. She is a figment of our imagination, and eternal, simultaneously.

As I read the book, I underlined hundreds of sentences. The perfect play of words. After the death of her mother. “For weeks I saw and heard her everywhere, day and night. She was a vapor that in my imagination continued to burn without a wick.”

When Lila sent Antonio to tell her the truth about Nino, “As for infidelities, he said, if you don’t find out about them at the right time, they are of no use.” And on and on, but I will save that for a discussion over wine.

The writing is superb, the story is epic, and ultimately, the 4 books are art in the highest and most sublime sense of the world. When many great artists come to the end of their art, they seek to make sense of what they have done. They spent thousands of hours crafting something in the hope perhaps that it may allow others to see what is right in front of their noses. Tartt ends the Goldfinch with a mediation on art, and Ferrante ends the Neapolitan series with a mediation on whether we are meant to endure or disappear.

And of course, she does both because those are one and the same. I believe Elena and Lila are Ferrante: a timeless treasure who may not even exist.