Book Review - The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante

I am delighted to finally be finishing the review of this series (see the last post here). I haven’t been enjoying this series for a while, and I’m thankful to be done now.

This novel is set in the mature stages of Lila and Lenu’s lives. After everything that has happened to them, they are now figuring out who they are as even more mature adults. Lenu is finally coming to a reflective stage of her life where she is realising the importance of her family and how important they have been all along. As she keeps making mistakes with her own family, her career, and her relationships, Lenu realises that she cannot return to who she was. Her identity is completely shaken and she is forced to look for meaning in the place she blames for her path in life. She realises that working with her friend, her biggest competition, has been where she needed to be all along. It is through this work that she realises that everything has come full circle and she has failed in many aspects of her life that are similar to the way her own family has.

The one thing I’ve always liked about this series is the linear narrative. We start one novel where the other finishes. The problem with this is that the same patterns have emerged over and over and over. The frame narrative would have been very effective if I was waiting for the next book to come out. Another positive aspect is the different between Lenu telling the story and Lenu’s adult voice coming through as reflections. I like the adult voice within the stories. Other than that, I do find that the novel drags on. There are long sections of the text without paragraph breaks, and it was overwhelming to look at. I simply did not enjoy reading this novel.

The character of Lenu infuriated me so much. She never gives the people around her enough credit. She had a short amount of success and thinks she’s better than everyone else yet gets pulled back into every drama from her old world. At some point, we all get it – her life is full of disaster. That point was clear from the first book and then reiterated in many other ways. I think the best part was the mirror of mother-daughter relationships between generations. That was one redeeming quality. 

It is has been a while since I’ve done a rating this low. I rate this a 1/5. I did not enjoy this series. I am so glad it is over.