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The last of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels
This is a story about the dark places, and the fires, inside all of us. It’s not new, it’s as old as Naples, but it’s told with the energy of possibility and through the eyes of women.
The Story of the Lost Child is the last book in a series of four – the Neapolitan novels.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (portrait by Stieler 1828)
There are names I heard at school that are still buried beneath teacher dust. Names I’ve never looked at again – unreachable, academic names. Goethe was one of them.
Then, a few weeks ago, I bumped into him on the internet and I read his notes on Naples. They were a happy find.
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
This book, the third in the series, has an ache in it that grows as the story lengthens. It is about the absence of love and belonging, and the complications of motherhood.
The themes belong to us all and Ferrante intensifies them against the backdrop of Naples. She paints her story with the city’s colours, chosen for their truth from a palette that other cities struggle to match.
The Phraser 