Story of the Lost Child (Ferrante)

Book Reviews
Elena and Lila…are one of those unforgettable pairs who define each other and take their place in our collective imagination as a matched set.... Ms. Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet is utterly distinctive, immersing us not just in a time and place, but deep within the psychological consciousness of its narrator.... Ms. Ferrante's writing—lucid and direct, but with a cyclonic undertow—is very much a mirror of both her heroines.... Ms. Ferrante…captures the day-to-day texture of women's lives…The novels are beautifully enmeshed, one with another, as if Ms. Ferrante had the entire quartet in her head from the start.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


Ferrante...adumbrates the mysterious beauty and brutality of personal experience.
Rachel Cusk - New York Times Book Review


[W]ith her new novel, The Story of the Lost Child, Ferrante has written what I’d call a “city book,” a knowing and complex tale that encompasses an entire metropolis. The breadth of vision makes this final installment feel like the essential volume.
John Domini - Washington Post


The saga is both comfortingly traditional and radically fresh, it gives readers not just what they want, but something more than they didn't know they craved...through this fusion of high and low art, Ms. Ferrante emerges as a 21st-century Dickens
Economist (UK)


The Story of the Lost Child does not offer a comfortable end to the series, but it confirms Ferrante—once again–as one of contemporary fiction’s most compelling voices.
Telegraph (UK)


This is Ferrante at the height of her brilliance.
Elissa Schappell - Vanity Fair


(Starred review.) The novel is Elena's final work and permanently ties Elena and Lila together, for better and worse. This stunning conclusion further solidifies the Neapolitan novels as Ferrante's masterpiece and guarantees that this reclusive author will remain far from obscure for years to come
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.) Elena's narrative...confidently carries readers through the course of two lives, but the shadowy circumstances of those lives will invite rereading and reinterpretation.... [A] mythic portrait of a female friendship in the chthonian world of postwar Naples.
Kirkus Reviews