In the Wake of Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels

This week I've been immersed in Naples, finishing The Story of The Lost Child, the fourth and final of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. Isn't it amazing (and wonderful) how a good book can absorb you, sweeping you away from your own life, and leaving you almost disoriented afterwards? I don't know what I'm going to read next.These Ferrante books (especially this last one) affected me on a very profound level. They are so rich and dense and complex and layered, so completely and artfully drawn. I don't want to talk in detail here lest I spoil the story for someone who has yet to embark upon it, but the novels collectively present the trajectories of two brilliant women, Elena Greco (the narrator) and Lila Cerullo, whose friendship begins in the Naples neighborhood of their childhood. These two at times seem to define, inspire, and invent each other as they navigate the rough world they are born into, aspiring to greater things, fueled and sparked by exceptional intelligence.

As many have said, Ferrante presents the complexity and intensity of female friendship as few writers have, and we see rivalry, anger, deep resentments, even periods of estrangement, as well as a fierce and steadfast love. But Ferrante explores other themes too: political and social change, feminism and motherhood, writing, memory, loss, the emotional and even violent forces of family and neighborhood and culture...all of it powerful and resonant. There's tension, danger, and passion as the epic unfolds but it's also imbued with an underlying sense of superstition and fairy tale, rendering it primeval and dream-like. The books cast a spell, and now I feel as if I am emerging from a trance, wondering what I am going to read next that will be this satisfying and engaging.

I realize I'm particularly susceptible to this particular volume right now because of circumstances in my own life. There is a scene about the death of Elena's mother, for example, and how afterwards she takes to wearing her mother's bracelet and even eventually acquires her mother's limp. This was painfully real to me, as I so recently watched my own mother's pitiable decline and have lately been wearing her bracelet (my wrist thin and bony, so similar to hers) and seeing certain of her qualities coming into focus within me, including a rather abrupt hearing loss. And there is much honesty here about becoming old and invisible, about kids embarking upon lives of their own (which is in fact the outcome to be grateful for), and late-in-life questioning of whether our work meant anything.

I admit I am also inherently interested in Naples, my paternal grandfather's birthplace and the port from which he, and throngs of others, set out to Ellis Island as the 20th century began. Even in my own New York childhood I recall residues of Old World superstition, violence, and passion, operatic remnants of a heritage shaped by poverty, war, and corruption, not to mention volcanoes and earthquakes...all of it amounting to a contradictory amalgam of fatalism plus fierce aspiration and longing. I recognize the pain and disappointment caused by daughters who do not adhere to expectations, and I am haunted by the possibility that those who leave are the ones who really stay. I am also intrigued by, among other things, the premonitions contained within childhood events, the courses laid out for us and the forces behind them, and the ongoing ripple effects of every choice and action.

Referring to Lila in the very first volume, Elena says, “It’s been at least three decades since she told me that she wanted to disappear without leaving a trace, and I’m the only one who knows what she means..." The heartbreaking event to which the final title alludes left me with an ineffable sense of loss...I wanted to undo it...but in the end, along with inexpressible grief and yearning, there is a certain resignation about vanishing, and we must all come to terms with it. Lila is being truthful when she declares that her favorite computer key is delete."

She wanted not only to disappear herself...but also to eliminate the entire life that she had left behind. I was really angry. We’ll see who wins this time, I said to myself. I turned on the computer and began to write – all the details of our story, everything that still remained in my memory.”

There's something so meta about this work. And defiant.