The Story of the Lost Child, by Elena Ferrante

[Stacey]

The Story of the Lost Child

I am bad. Really bad. Like a kid who demands dessert before dinner, I am already reading my Week 13 book: Reader's Choice. Skipping over the meat 'n potatoes of weeks 1-12, I just couldn't wait to get my hands on this sweet treat!

This is the last of the four wonderfully complex Neapolitan novels from Ferrante and created again with hypersensitivity and hyper awareness. This final book promises to be as delectable as the first three.

[Stacey]

This gripping story, of two friends who grow up together in Naples, has come full circle. The novel explores so many different themes, including love, sex, writing, politics, education, bereavement, motherhood, marriage and corruption.

The ending wraps up their lives nicely, although I found the first three books more gripping in some ways than this one. Without giving anything away, I was a little disappointed in the ending, but that's only because I wanted a pivotal plot point to have turned out differently. This is the only one of the four novels that I felt could have been shorter, but nevertheless, this quadrilogy was one of the finest works of literature I've ever read.

[Stephanie]

Stacey wrote: "This gripping story, of two friends who grow up together in Naples, has come full circle. The novel explores so many different themes, including love, sex, writing, politics, education, bereavement..."

I finally finished this series! I completely agree about this fourth book - I wanted it to end a bit differently and overall it dragged, which I didn't feel about the first three books. Overall I love this series of books so much!