Introduction
So much happens in The Story of the Lost Child and there are so many surprises that a good way to make sense of it is to begin at the end and consider what we know by the final stages of the book. Before I do so, however, a few preliminaries are in order.
Firstly, Elena analyses her own behaviour, and this layer of analysis illuminates her and others’ behaviour. I will try not to repeat the obvious. Secondly, the final novel veers off into territory I had not anticipated in my analysis of the first three. I am glad. As a reader I tend to prefer the Lila-centric parts of the novels over the Elena-centric parts of the novels, probably because they are the extraordinary ones. It also means that some of my observations were not conclusive. I will comment on a couple of these, but I won’t harp on about it.
The Lost Child
Until Tina’s disappearance, we are led to think of Imma as the lost child, because of her inability to adjust. She is an emotionally lost child. This turns out to be a clever ploy by the author to keep us ensconced in the joy of those Halcyon days before the cruel blow is delivered. Whether intended or not, the care with which Tina was made the focal point of the photoshoot signalled to me a symbolic exchange of destinies and, indeed, I feared for the worst. I had a sleepless night after Michele punched Lila in the face and sensed a terrible tragedy in the lives of the Lila and Enzo.
Yet by the end of the novel Tina’s fate is magnified in other characters and perhaps in almost all the familiar characters of the neightbourhood. Lila and Gennaro are both lost children. Gennaro, like Imma, is emotionally lost and weak willed. He never really grows up. Elena treats him like a stupid boy at the very start of book one. Lila herself is a lost child. Her precocious talents as a child have all stilted and repressed by adult responsibilities, an adult world, through work, through hardship, and now through tragedy. Yet the child inside never gave up, always held fast in some hidden corner. This child held fast to hope, and this hope is for the longest time connected to Elena, whose life was meant to justify Lila’s suffering. Once Elena’s activist efforts in the neighbourhood fail, and especially after Tina disappears, even this hope fades. Lila is disappointed in Elena.
The truth about Elena’s doll Tina, like a voodoo doll representating Elena, remains hidden inside Lila until the novel’s resolution. At the same time Lila herself remains tucked inside Elena’s soul. This hidden knot binds the two friends for a lifetime, and is the edifice on which the novel is built. Like those Neapolitan churches that come to fascinate Lila, and that commemorate forgotten atrocities, Elena’s story is a literary monument that exists because of the horrible events that caused suffering in their lives.
To clarify this point, let’s ask a question. Would there have been a story or indeed the need for one, if Lila’s life had proceeded according to her childhood promise? Yes! There would almost certainly have been a need for it, but chances are that she would have written it herself, even if that life unfolded side by side with Elena’s.
The lost child from Elena’s point of view, therefore, is Lila, and if Lila once admonished Elena for writing “ugly things” (in that second novel that only belatedly gets published, and then to great fanfare) it can be understood from this viewpoint: that Lila’s hidden child wanted beautiful things, and that Lila’s hidden, lost child wanted Elena to transform the world into beautiful things. Instead, Elena merely reflected the ugliness of their world. It is a world from which Lila never tried to escape, trusting Elena would help her to transform it, even if only in literature. Yet in old age, after even Elena disappointed her, she finally shifted out of Elena’s range. Lila’s hidden child is lost first because she is left behind, and second because Elena disappoints her, doesn't help her escape the ugliness. Tina’s disappearance is the symbolic reinforcement, or realisation, of this “lostness” - of being lost.
Elena suffers in the absence of Lila. It is a type of mourning that refuses acceptance. It is an angry suffering. Acceptance comes only at the very end. Elena’s suffering in the absence of Lila mirrors the suffering Lila felt in the absence of Tina. It is a suffering that results from not knowing whether she is dead or alive. This suffering finds further fertile ground in the imagination of the reader, who knows about Lila’s disappearance from the start, and learns about her tragic life only through the eyes of Elena. As readers we are outraged at Lila’s fate, but also at the fate of all the downtrodden characters.
The significance of the dolls have a direct connection to the lost child(ren), but I discuss them more fully in the next section. For now, let’s complete the round-up of “lost children” by acknowledging with Elena that, although the Solaras have been almost universally hated, they also did their bit for the neighbourhood, to make it what it is - even its good aspects. Alfonso, Rino, Gigliola, Gino, Bruno are all children who got lost somewhere on the way. They stand for the loss of innocence, of hope, of childhood in general. In their place Elena writes her literary monument that remembers all their lives - not just her and Lila’s.
More specifically, through the loss of little Tina, Lila’s suffering is the suffering of the whole neighbourhood. By disowning Lila and forgetting, the people in the neighbourhood disown themselves, and thus their redemption becomes truly futile. Lila realises that the neighbourhood cannot be truly changed - not even by her and Elena.
It is not an optimistic vision, but it is rooted in a reality that has an emotional authenticity that is difficult to dispute.
The Dolls
Now that we have considered the Lost Child of the title, what should we make of the dolls and their return at the end? Elena receives the two little dolls from their childhood, Tina and Nu, in an unmarked newspaper package together with her post. No addressee, no return address.
The first conclusion we can draw is that Lila is alive and well somewhere, which indeed is the possibility that Elena herself entertains:
“Maybe those two dolls that had crossed more than half a century and had come all the way to Turin meant only that she was well and loved me” - p. 473.
We see here Elena’s need for validation and approval on clear display (“she … loved me”), but it is the strong possibility that Lila is alive that is of primary interest to us. Lila could have committed suicide and planned it that way, but it would not be consistent with the lost child who has finally found a new life for herself. That child was too curious and irrepressible. That child, now lost to Elena, has been recovered by Lila unto herself.
Secondly, it is an admission by Lila of the role - unspoken up to now - Elena has played in providing courage to her in the face of overwhelming fears, such as those she confessed to in the aftermath of the earthquake. When they went up to Don Achille to confront him - one of the scariest moments of their childhood - and Lila looked so brave she was partly brave because Elena was there beside her.
This fear-courage duality is part of the secret knot of their friendship alluded to in the previous section. It is not just that “Lila has let herself be seen so plainly” (p. 473), but the very knot of their relationship has been made plain. By being made plain it now also loses its power, because Lila has relinquished it. Lila no longer needs Elena to give her courage - she has made a leap, on her own, that we know nothing of.
Thirdly, by relinquishing it, Lila also releases herself. The suppressed confines of her life finally lifts and she is free. We don’t know anything about it, but we can perhaps imagine her: a cantankerous old woman no one would pay any attention to, yet whose intelligence is still sharp and inquisitive at nearly 70 years of age, and who still has a few years left to live and enjoy life without the neighbourhood, without children, without men, without Elena, without the expectations of her childhood - without even the expectation and intrusion of us as readers (here we are reminded of the contrast between the real author, Elena Ferrante, who prefers to live anonymously rather than riding the wave of fame the way Elena of the novel did for the sake of her career; in other words, Ferrante is more like Lila in this respect).
The returned dolls means Lila has gone beyond the pale, and beyond even the bounds of Elena’s tale.
Fourthly, since dolls are often stand-ins for babies in the cultural environment in which several generations of girls have grown up in, the return of the dolls also reflect on the motherhoods of Elena and Lila. Although Lila lost Tina, and Gennaro was a disappointment, she was nevertheless a responsible, dedicated mother - even to Elena’s children until adolescence. Elena was a far better mother than Nino was a father, but she still suffers from her own children’s admonishment that she was too absorbed in her own work. Lila filled this gap.
By returning the dolls, Lila relinquishes her own role as surrogate mother completely, as well as being mother to Gennaro. Their roles have reversed, and on Elena's side of the fence the story hasn't quite ended. She has three children, plus Lila had made Elena promise all those years ago. Elena is now responsible for Gennaro.
Fifthly, the loss of those dolls were the stuff of childhood emotions. They chucked each other’s dolls into the cellar in a jealous rivalry, a dynamic pattern that repeated itself over many years. The return of those dolls means the end of that dynamic. No more jealousy, no more rivalry. Elena, however, thrived on that competition, and her career was ignited by it.
Finally, the timing of the dolls’ return suggests a simultaneous discovery and loss of Lila’s inner child. Elena wanted Lila to hack* into her computer and read the novel. It is not inconceivable that this actually happened, and that Elena’s conclusion to the contrary is simply more evidence of her inability to see coincidences and the connections between events. The novel is finished, and soon after the dolls arrive. Perhaps Lila, herself finally free, read eagerly and realised that what Elena wrote is actually good, even if not exactly beautiful. Lila no longer needs it to be beautiful. She sees something of herself, and perhaps above all she sees Elena. She takes mercy, and frees Elena.
* Readers may have noticed more than a passing resemblance between Lila’s character and that of Lisbeth Salander. I know that I have.
Elena and Lila
Where does this leave Elena? There are many things we don’t know about Elena’s day-to-day life, but she has told us about most of the truly important events. We know that for significant periods she thrived on the competition and inspiration Lila provided. That force has now faded from Elena’s life, and she can enjoy what’s left - children and relative fame - without that pressure, without that interference. Perhaps she can mend her relationships with her children, perhaps Gennaro will take up some of her time. Either way, it is without a doubt the end of an era.
As for herself, Lila has finally freed herself of the burdens and responsibilities that had taken up her whole life. She gives up Gennaro, she gives up Elena, the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood had given up on her over the years, but she had always been a fixture, an anchor. In the final instance, her energy and inspiration had also gone into the novel we've just read. In this way she served Elena's career, albeit frequently in her own interest. Now, finally, she was free. She who had always been afraid had finally done what she could never do before: be completely independent - even independent of Elena, of the novel. True to her nature, there is no tying her down, and no knowing who she really is.
Nino
The Neapolitan saga is full of characters struggling to escape the influence of their parents, only to find themselves emulating them in one way or another. Nino epitomises this theme. He hated and rejected his father throughout his adolescence, yet ended up taking womanising to a whole new level. We saw the first part coming, even if Elena did not. Yet when she finally processes his legacy, she judges him “disappointing”. Of course, Lila got there first and understands the nature of his character all too well. She judges him worse than herself because, she says, he is superficial. Guido Airota makes a separate observation about him, namely that he is “intelligence without tradition”. A talented man without roots, who has nothing to lose, and is all too eager to be someone. At the end of the saga Nino sings his own praises, but those who loved him from close up have all realised that he is an unreliable, lightweight human being.
What, therefore, should we make of Elena’s longstanding crush on him? She herself realises that she had created a fantasy, and that the person who showed up at her book reading in Milan had nothing to do with that fantasy. They were separate entities. However, fantasy and reality corresponded sometimes. For instance, his behaviour as an adolescent was real. She saw him as cool and untouchable, unaffected by the opinions of those around him. His head was somewhere else. That trait turned out to be a flaw, a disregard for everyone around him, even those who adored him and whom he sporadically loved in return when it suited him.
He had intelligence, charisma, and good looks. He seemed untouchable, smooth in all situations. When he showed up at the book reading he was a knight in shining armour, rescuing her from the attacks of a stuffy intellectual. What Ferrante is doing, as Nino’s character unfolds in all its mirage-like glory, is turn the literary convention of the hero - reminiscent of, say, Will Ladislaw in Middlemarch - on its head. She is taking a longer view. Book 3 could have ended with Nino willing to reform for the sake of his “true” love for Elena. We could have been told that “they lived happily ever after”. Instead, we got the bombshell that is book 4. Nino is a warning that many of the classics are perhaps guilty of building fantasies and gender stereotypes rather than looking at the genuine commitments to gender role realities that are implied by marriage and long term partnerships. It is a stunning critique.
If I had expected Nino’s general infidelity, his ongoing marriage to Eleonora was more of a surprise. It is a cleverly disguised plot device that all but defines his character. It anchors his tendency to put every relationship in service of his career ambitions. It provides him with monetary stability and a conservative societal esteem, namely of keeping a family. It also characterises his inability to finish off any relationship. In his personal life he is a politician: not a conviction politician, but one who goes where the grass is green.
Another surprise was the amount of time it took for Elena to get rid of him. In her case, also, we see what she is willing to sacrifice for her career - in her case her human dignity. For a while she lives the life of a concubine. Yet it’s not just a career, it’s also the children and the roof over their heads. She’d created a complex set of responsibilities for herself, and she was keeping herself entangled out of necessity.
It takes her even longer still to realise that his interest in her was due to the prestige she reflected back on him. This tendency in a man is so unusual that she couldn’t see it for what it is.
Only Lila put Nino’s life at risk by being of no use to his career. Lila is therefore in a league of her own.
“She stood out among so many because she, naturally, did not submit to any training, to any use, or to any purpose. All of us had submitted and that submission had - through trials, failures, successes - reduced us.” - p. 403
If Lila’s capacity for suffering is bottomless, Nino’s suffering is like a sulking child’s when it cannot gets its way. When he gets the upper hand once more, it is water off a duck’s back. By the end of the novel Nino is nothing but an annoying stranger whom Elena finds “large, bloated, a big ruddy man with thinning hair who was constantly celebrating himself” (p. 470).
By the end of the saga, Elena herself is leaning more towards traditional values again. She recognises that Pasquale is “much better preserved than Nino”, and speaks fondly about the values he took over from his father and that he upheld at great personal cost. Indeed, even the passing of the Solaras are met with a balanced sense of loss. Elena may share something of Nino’s flightiness and ambitious disregard for those close to her, but she recognises the love she had for her old friends, for the neighbourhood, for all the families that lived there - even for her own mother. We don’t truly know Nino anymore by the end of the saga, but his lack of interest in his own children speaks volumes.
I return to Nino a little later for a final look at his character.
Pietro
Pietro, who resembles MiddleMarch’s Casaubon and Wuthering Heights’ Edgar Linton in the during the earlier novels, in book 4 emerges as a far better partner and father than Nino. He never shirks his responsibilities, he is tender and observant (as when he advises Elena sensitively about Lila), and despite his general physical deficiencies, Elena judges him worthy of her bed one last time before he leaves for America. Elena recognises his selfish need to spend his personal time with his work, yet accepts it more readily later in life, since she recognises the similarity to her own character. In short, she endorses him as a good former husband, even if she has no desire to start something new. In all these respects Pietro also turns the classic literary stereotype somewhat on its head.
With both these male characters Ferrante is taking our common literary canon to task.
Alfonso
One of the great satisfactions of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan saga is the way in which the story lends itself to analysis. There is enough substance for a thesis, and a blog post can really only hope to probe a few angles. We have not even taken a look at the Solaras, and we should.
One perspective from which to tackle the changing fortunes of the Solaras in book 4 is via the prism of Alfonso. Alfonso is a gender bender who mediates between the destructive masculine energy represented by the Solaras, and Lila’s near-indestructible counterpoint of female energy. He is both a gay man and a cross-dresser, and his muse is Lila. Not only that, he wants to become Lila. The result is that he begins to resemble Lila even more than Lila herself.
Michele Solara, always the more dangerous of the two brothers, has lost the upper hand in his dealings with Lila since she established Basic Sight with Enzo. She and Enzo have become self-sufficient. Michele’s deep respect and yearning for Lila means that this energy now spills out over a cliff and he needs a surrogate for his obsession, which the shape shifting Alfonso provides. They become a type of couple, albeit covertly. (Marcello is furious, although there is nothing he can do.)
The Solaras epitomise a type of macho male energy that simply cannot co-exist with a true female energy. Michele is obsessed by his opposite, but it is also his downfall. Their violence is not compatible with equal distribution of male and female energy. They require submission. Lila and Enzo, on the other hand, embody the only example in the neighbourhood of a different, balanced model of male and female partnership.
As Michele and Alfonso get closer to each other, the Solaras are weakened. At the same time Lila and Enzo become stronger, especially after the return of Elena, and the birth of both their daughters. Masculine and feminine energies find a kind of equilibrium in Lila’s family life perhaps for the first time, and the result is a temporary happiness and harmony (which, after the loss of Tina, never returns). During this period Michele is reduced to a tentative, nervous man who can no longer act with vigour. Whereas Alfonso now embraces his own newfound identity of a woman in a man’s body, modeled on and inspired by Lila, Michele is completely at odds with himself.
We don’t really know what happens between Michele and Alfonso, but it seems that Alfonso overshoots his privileges and Michele kicks him out. The entire balance of masculine and feminine forces in the niehgbourhood are once again in jeopardy, stacked in favour of the destructive masculine element once more. Alfonso loses his feminine appearance, he becomes unreliable, and the whole sorry saga ends with his death at the hands of unknown assailants. It is the beginning of the end.
Tina’s disappearance is the visible culmination of this multi-generational journey. Whereas we are never sure who took Tina, the flow of energies suggests the Solaras were behind it, except that they thought it was Elena’s child - not Lila’s.
Everything from then on - even the death of the Solaras - suggests to Lila that nothing will ever really change in the old neighbourhood.
Nino and Elena
While we are on the topic of contrasting energies we should take a last look at Nino and Elena.Nino exhibits a strong blend of the feminine and the masculine. His willingnes to sleep with influential women in order to get to the top is a strategy more commonly associated - rightly or wrongly - with ambitious women in society. Combined with his intelligence, charisma, and good looks, this is a killer strategy. He appears to have disguised his stereotypically Southern tendencies behind an alluring, more acceptable Northern veneer. His masculine aggression, paired with a keen feminine sensibility, which is to say an ability to tune into women’s emotions, makes him an effective and well rounded talent. Unfortunately it is almost completely erased by his lack of commitment to his roots, or indeed to any place where he puts down new roots - except where there is power. He sows the wild oats and moves on.
Elena comes across as conservatively feminine during most of her adolescence, but her ambition passes through masculine territory via her academic learning of the classics. She breaks out of academia and attempts, with Lila as inspiration, to marry her feminine and masculine sides to great subversive effect.
If the masculine and feminine are played off against each other, so are the Northern and Southern cultures. In this case Nino and Elena are the clearest examples of this co-habiting duality, since both rise high above their origins. Indeed, at times they mirror each other. However, unlike Nino, Elena increasingly recognises her roots and turns to the neighbourhood of her and Lila’s youth for inspiration. Even so, she moves to Turin in the North for her retirement.
Conclusion
As epitomised by Lila’s life throughout most of the saga, any equilibrium of opposing forces is extremely hard to maintain. Each character in his or her own way tries to find such an equilibrium, and success tends to come at the cost of others, or at the cost of social cohesion.
The Story of the Lost Child resolves the main plot points in often startling ways, but it is the openended implications of the ending that ensures the reader will continue to reflect on the rich material provided.
33 comments:
Thank you. This analyses has been very helpful for me. At the surprise twist at the end,II was struck by the connection between the following: there is a short conversation between Elena and Lila on page 218. When Elena reminds Lila that Lila had given her daughter the name of Elena's doll, Lila responds by asking "what doll"? I found this to be an(other) indication of Lila's ongoing deception toward Elena, which she cruelly confirmed blatantly at the end of the novel when she reveals that she'd had possession of the dolls for decades. Also interesting is the connection between: Lila's actions toward Elena's doll and her apathy toward Elena in that action when they were little girls, Lila describing the baby in Elena's belly to Dede and Elsa as a doll, and the fact that it is Lila's baby(doll) who ends up suffering the same fate as the original Tina doll; I.e, lost in the unknown . What are your thoughts on this?
I think you have said it very well. They are themes that build on one another, and perhaps the dolls also suggest that they treated each other, sometimes, as less-than-human - as convenient entities to use or manipulate. Yet, when profound things happen, people are not just dolls: they are humans. So when Tina as little girl is truly lost it is a tragedy, and this signifier cascades onto all the other lost children of Naples, exposing their collective tragedy.
Incidentally the theme of being less-than-human, especially women - whose state of being suppressed and used is ubiquitous throughout the novel - strikes me as a central theme of the whole saga. The dolls can be seen as a stand-in for this state.
Thank you for this. I just finished the 4th book last night and felt a strong need for just this sort of analysis.
I would like to raise another question. I was shocked by the ending, the return of the dolls, because it meant that Lila had remained in possession of the dolls the whole time. It meant that the journey to basement and the journey to Don Achille's were not what they appeared to be to Elena and thus to the reader. What were they then to Lila? Why did she instigate them? Were they a test of some sort of test for Elena? They were purposeful to her?-- but to what end? -- to create the friendship in the first place? To cement a (falsely) shared fear as a bond? Perhaps Lila craved danger but lacked the courage to experience it alone and thus coerced Elena into sharing it with her. Did she see in Elena, from such a young age, a courage or some other quality that she innately lacked, not withstanding the difference in education that would later differentiate them? Lila was undoubtably a key by which Elena accessed her ability to write and all that came with it. It seems that Lila knew from the start that Elena was a key for her--but to what?
All the time possessing the dolls, creating an illusion, a subterfuge by which to draw in Elena, (and then maintaining that subterfuge throughout their relationship) meant that she had been calculating and had had an agenda regarding Elena since the age of 6. Knowing now that Lila was that precocious and that manipulative from such an early age made me think that I immediately needed to re-read the novels and that with this knowledge everything is recast and perhaps another story is told.
Excellently put. It was most disconcerting for me as well to find that Lila had been in possession of the dolls the entire time, but I wasn't able to quite articulate the reasons for my discomfort with this revelation. Thank you for saying it so well. I do feel compelled to go back and read at least that introductory section of the first book. I will do so this evening. I'm grateful that we're able to discuss these books here in this forum, there's so much to ponder!
I actually think the question of when Lila recovered the dolls is not clear. She was married to Stefano--maybe at some point during her marriage, she found the dolls among the Carracci possessions--maybe Lila did not have them--During her visit with Pasquale he ominously asks if she wants to know who killed the Solaras--was he bluffing or is he some kind of powerful backstage manipulator? Its possible even that he had something to do with the return of the dolls and that he knows where Lila went. So many questions
Perhaps Lila didn't have the dolls the whole time. She might have acquired them while married to Don Achille's son, Stefano, or her close relationship with his other son, Alfonso.
Oh so perhaps it was alphonso who took the dolls after all...Don Achille paid the girls to avoid the embarrassment? And then, yes, later on he gave them to lila?
I think Unknown's scenario is the most likely if Lila did not have them the entire time. Thoughts?
I think it is obvious Lila had the dolls all this time. I mean this shows her real character and is one of the central ideas of the books.
Surely by sending the dolls to Lena, Lila was telling her that Lila's daughter Tina had been hidden - just like the dolls. Lila must have been worried (when Tina's picture appeared with Elena in the papers) that Tina's life might be in danger. So she staged a snatch and her daughter was put in hiding. Surely those long walks around Naples must have included a visit to her hidden daughter.
The return of the dolls to me suggested what Anonymous wrote above. However, I struggle with that because why had Lila ended so many relationships and behaved in such a manner if she had known Tina was hidden.
I think Lila had always been duplicitous and manipulative. She is bored by her own doll and asks Lenu for hers to play with it only for a while but then tosses it into a cellar. In the same way, on the day of Tina's disappearance, she cast Tina aside and took Imma in her arms because she wanted Nino's attention. The return of the dolls was her way of showing herself plainly to Lenu (and you will recall how Lenu had yearned for it for a long time). She had had the dolls the whole time.and I think that she knew where Tina was or had disappeared to. She was the only one who insisted that Tina was alive and broke up with Enzo in the end because he believed that she was dead. I think at first she had wanted Elena's daughter to be snatched, to hurt her. But because of the newspaper mix up it was her daughter who ended up snatched and afterwards there was no way to return her. I think when she was writing, she was writing emails to Tina. I think the return of the dolls was a coded message to Elena that the two people she thought were lost (lila & her daughter tina) were in fact alive, well and together.
To gain further insight into what may have happened to the dolls, one should read a different, and shorter, story by Ferrante: La Figlia Oscura. The translation of the title, strangely enough, is The Lost Daughter. The story revolves around a doll that has disappeared. It is not part of the four book series, the fourth book being entitled The Story of the Lost Child.
I have an alternate epilogue for me.
I unfortunately don't think that Lila really knew - for whole time - where Tina was (and I am not sure if she had the dolls for a whole time). But I agree with the option that the return of the dolls could be a coded message to Elena - that Lila and Tina were in fact alive and together.
It was hard for me that I don't know, what happened with Tina and what is the worse - her parents don't know. So I try to believe that Tina is alive and Lila find that.
If someone sold Tina - however, she was very clever and maybe charismatic child - she maybe got chance arise her potential. She could be a great student and - maybe later - a scientist / writer / historian ... And one day, she could have an article in some magazine - with a photo. In this case, Lila could recognize her - they were very similar - e.g. Nino remarked that. And thus Lila (or Enzo first) could get contact her daughter.
Maybe it's naive, but I'm looking for some options...
Thank you for the review and insights. I also think Lilo had the dolls all along and decided to return them to Elena as a reaction to the short book she published breaking her promise for the sake of literary fame. its her way of showing Elena that she knew nothing and the theme of the lost dolls was nothing but a literary ploy that had nothing to do with reality. I also think that Lilo's decision to disappear had a lot to do with her wanting to teach Elena a lesson - to show her what it really feels like to have someone you love disappear and never know what happened to them.
There is a throwaway line when the girls are search g for the dolls in the cellar (I do t have the book to hand though so I can't quote it). If I remember correctly, Lola's eyes flicked to a dark corner, and she then told Elena that the dolls were impossible to find and they needed to confront Don Achille. I was wary of Lina throughout the series for this reason. I think she knew she could never "possess" Elena if she had to compete with the doll. Same thing with Nino. In fact, the only halfway successful relationships Elena had were those away from Linda's eyes.
Who killed Don Achille? A "woman," as Lila said? Was it Lila? She seemed to know all the details of his murder, so was that an obvious admission that she did it?
I had a hard time accepting the negative side of Lila in light of her "special" side that so many noticed. I guess I kept hoping that she'd come around - maybe she did in the very end and that's what the 2 dolls being returned represented. Hope is eternal!
I had watched a couple episodes of the HBO series while reading the 4th book and it did affect the visuals in my head - seeing what the characters could have looked like. it was very well done and I'm wondering if the other books will be filmed as well.
Having finished the final book only moments ago, I'm still immersed in that world. Glad I found this review and all the possibilities that the comments revealed. I thought of none of them! However, I'll need to come up with a few goodies to escape from that world as I look for my next book to read. It will be a hard act to follow!
I think Lila had the dolls all along. I don't feel one can create a conspiracy theory involving multiple characters like a mystery without a nod from the author and there wasn't one. Lenu seems to blame Lila for many things from the start, which without hearing Lila's voice directly, it's only ever filtered through Lenu, the reader can't be sure that the blame doesn't rest squarely on Lenu's shoulders. The doll is physical proof that Lila had at times, wished Lenu ill (and vice versa of course) and the reason is that Lila coveted Lenu's doll: plastic, while hers was even cruder, sawdust. They were both poor but Lenu had that little but crucial bit more in money and parental support. And Lila, organically, had that little bit more in intelligence and grit. They were both selfish, not just Lenu. I wasn't sure they were balanced until the end. I also think it points to Lenu's story ending, "The Friendship," being true: that Lila was using Lenu's daughter to flirt with Nino to stick one in Lenu's eye. And so Tina was taken. By whom, we simply don't know. If I had to bet money, it would be the Solaras. Michele finally punched Lila: she was losing her looks to age, Alfonso was losing his looks to testosterone; her spell over him broken with the punch. I expect he had a lot more rage than a punch in the face to get out. I'm guessing he killed the child and disposed of the body so it would never be found. Why would anybody kill Lenu's child? Lila's words are red herrings. Once a spell in fairy tales is broken, something good happens, but this novel is an inversion of myth, so something bad happens: Tina. Lila dissolves the walls of female myth for herself this time, not a passive victim of 'dissolving boundaries' and sees clearly and is free. But what is 'free' for Lenu? A blank page, the ending of the book? That's what I miss most.
Thank you for all of your comments to clarify the depth these novels offer. I do not think I have read such great works in a long time.
I finished reading the series last night and too was curious as to what others thought.
Had Lila found the dolls right away when they were young girls or more recently? When she receives the dolls Lenú states, “Here’s what she had done: she had deceived me, she had dragged me wherever she wanted, from the beginning of our friendship.” But she also states, “I examined the two dolls carefully, I smelled the odor of mold...,” which I took to mean perhaps Lila only retrieved the dolls from the moldy basement recently. Yet Lenú ends with saying that by returning the dolls, “Lila has let herself be seen plainly.”
Even in book 1, after Lila claimed it was Don Achilles who took the dolls, Lenu says,
“I believed everything she told me. The shapeless mass of Don Achille running through the underground tunnels, arms dangling, large fingers grasping Nu’s head in one hand, in the other Tina’s.”
I agree it was odd that Lila denied knowing about the name of the doll when Lenú brought it up after the girls were born. Not just because Lenú remembered and Lila didn’t, but because Lenú had recently recounted the story when they were pregnant, “Mine was called Tina, hers Nu. She had thrown Tina into the shadows of the cellar and I, out of spite, had done the same with Nu. Do you remember, I asked. She seemed bewildered, she had the faint smile of someone struggling to recapture a memory.”
Yet, while all of this suggests Lila found the dolls before their girls were born in 1981, I still wasn’t sure if it meant how many of you interpreted it, that it proves Lila’s deceptive practices, or if instead it meant, “I found the dolls and I can find (or have already found) my daughter.” In chapter 1 of the epilogue, Lenu says, “Will they return together, Lila old, Tina a grown woman...this morning...I am waiting.” And then in epilogue chapter 2 she states she received the package with the dolls, “yesterday.”
I don’t think Lila knew where baby Tina was. Her grief seemed real, she wouldn’t have done that to Enzo, Pietro saw her in the library, and she was amassing all of that knowledge reading. Yet, I’ll have to reread book 4 with that potential perspective. For example, maybe she didn’t want what happened to Gennaro to happen to Tina, and she was indeed gone for hours at a time.
I’ve enjoyed reading this blog and everyone else’s comments. Brava Elena Ferrante, for doing exactly what you noted makes a wonderful book: the element of surprise that couldn’t have been any other way.
Not only do I personally believe Lila had the dolls the entire time, the HBO show, which I can only presume had Ferrante’s approval, it clearly shows that Lila is hiding the dolls while supposedly looking for them in the cellar.
I believe Lila was hiding the dolls all the time. I also believe she is hiding her daughter Tina trying to have her away from Naples, if I remember she tried to convince Lenu to take Ima away from the city also telling its not place for her. I like to believe that Lila is with Tina and that returned dolls implicate that.
The curious thing is why Lila sent Lenu BOTH dolls instead of just Lenu's. Could it be Lila finally relinquishing the relationship, symbolised by the dolls?
These are all wonderful insights and I am overly delighted to be apart of such a beautiful discussion & topic. I personally loved the books,but believe different,I think Lila wasn't in possession of the dolls the entire time,but might have obtained them through Alfonso or Stefano,she was deceptive towards Lenu at times yes but I don't think she was when it came to the dolls.Lila might also know where her daughter is,but might also have disappeared to search for her,I think these women did work at hurting each other at times,though cared enough about it each to forgive & move on.I also believe the dolls are Lenu's present from Lila symbolizing a truce between the two for good.
Is it possible that Lila, far from punishing Lenu for writing her life story, had actually wanted her life mythologised in this way, and manipulated Lenu to do this? And that her disappearance simply reflected that she no longer had any use for Lenu; that she had served her purpose?
And the sending of the dolls were simply a way of showing Lenu that things were profoundly not as they seemed?
I also think Lenu's briefly held theory that Lila was responsible (whether directly or by manipulation or simply suggestion) for the murders of Gino and Bruno (and perhaps even the Solaras) is entirely plausible
And if, indeed, Lila had found the dolls in the basement when they first looked for them, why did she insist on confronting Don Achille? Was the chucking of the doll in the first place all simply a pretext for confronting him? To what end, then? To do reconnaissance on his home (and his body) - to find his weak spot in preparation for one day killing him? (and surely the naming of this character is not coincidental!)
And was her feigned grief, following putting her daughter into hiding, all an elaborate ruse to make herself 'invisible', to render her incapable, in the neighbourhood imagination, of the murder of the Solaras?
I'm more pessimistic about the ending... Tina was kidnapped by the order of Sollaras or "bigger" mafia. What we know about Camorra is that it is cruel and does not pity even small children. Tina became a victim because of the incrementing articles written by Elena.
Lila is a naturally talented person and she really believed she could "clean" the neighborhood from Solaras. As explained in the books, in sixties there were many young idealists like Pasquale, Enzo, Franko, Nadia, Mariarosa and more - communists or social democrats with different background - rich and poor, educated and not...
Whether Tina really existed or not, during the struggle with fascists something broke Lila and we could only pity her like many other young, brave and idealists who gave up their lives for better lives for next generations. Remember Franko? How enthusiastic he was at the university about the revolution? And how struggle with fascists broke him?
But Lila could not know and no one could know how drugs and even worse criminal activities would pour into the neighborhood. So many young people overdosed during those times, like Alfonso and more people from the neighborhood.
I love Lila and I wish she were selfish to leave the neighborhood for better and pursue banal goals in life. ...And I really wonder what did Pietro write in his letter to Lila after the tragedy with Tina?
I've just finished Book 4...
The final revelation reminded me of AS Byatt's Possession -- what does a literary researcher (even when researching herself) really know of reality?
Then reading these comments I realised there was another parallel: in Possession, Christabel's dolls literally hide her secret (although at first the researchers, when they come across the line, think it's a literary device -- then they find the actual dolls). Just a thought, I'm still processing :)
I think the door is open here for Ferrante to complete the task. There are always two sides to every story and I hope some day we will get to read what Lila says of this saga. I am not sure this other side would fully answer our every question; it might possibly raise more questions than it would answer. Yet, I would greatly enjoy the opportunity to read Lila's account of the decades long relationship with Lenu as well as what would surely be a more in depth and likely more accurate tale of what took place in the old neighborhood
A
I was not surprised by the fact that Lila had the dolls. I found Lila's manipulation through out the whole series of books. Clearly Lila was jealous of Elena her whole life. The teacher tried to warn Elena when she asked her in the first book if she knew what Plebs were. The teacher was referring to Lila and her family. Lila had this manipulation in her since she was a child. In book 1 Lila convinced Elena to skip school so they could go to the beach. Elena's parents were sacrificing to pay for her to get tutoring to attend middle school and pass exams. Something that Lila's parents would not do for her. I believe Lily thought if she got Elena in trouble for skipping school. Her parents would not send her for tutoring as punishment. I believe this is why Lila suggested they skip school and go to the beach. On the way to the beach Lila suddenly changes her mind and decides it too far and she don't want to see the ocean. They walked far but never got to the beach and Lila turned back just so it was long enough for them to miss school. Elena's mom was waiting and Elena got in trouble.
Elena met Lila the next morning and asked her so does this mean that your not going to attend Middle school. Elena answers no of course not. Elena was hit and punished. Lila claimed that she felt bad about Elena getting hit and in trouble but her manipulation did not work Elena was going to middle school. Lila's plan did not work and it made her more jealous of Elena. That's why Lila fights with her father and he throws her out the window and breaks her shoulder. Later Lila also goes with Nino knowing that Elena loved him. Everything Lila does is to spite Elena. That's why she took the dolls in the first place. I believe she saw them in the dark in the basement but didn't want Elena to know. Clearly she goes back for them. Having Elena's doll Tina in a twisted way made Lila think she could control Elena and her success. I also believe Lila named her daughter Tina to also spite Elena. Lila was always jealous of Elena that's what I saw through out all the books. I think Elena realizes this that's why she tells Gennaro she doesn't want him to bother her any longer, when he calls to say Lila was gone and took everything. I found Lila to be manipulative throughout the whole book. She used everyone including the Solair's in all three books. She used Stephano, Nino and Enzo too. . Lila did what she needed to do because she always felt like a Pleb and needed to survive.
Arai, the same like you, I love Lila who was "the wind behind Lenu's wings and the others! Matilda from Perú
The true Nino was revealed early on:
I just finished the fourth book and omg do I love this series of novels. Absolutely amazing. Don’t even know where to begin but here is something that may not have been addressed already.
I remember that in the second book I believe, when Nino comes back into Elena’s life, their conversations were rather alarming. There was detail on the fact that when Elena would talk about her own ideas or opinions or what she was studying, Nino was not interested. But if she read what he told her to read, asked questions about what he thought, or showed she was enraptured by his own intellect, THAT is when he was interested in talking to her for hours and resuming contact. He was revealed to be a dick from the start, even before Ischia (when he certainly knew that Elena had feelings for him- he was perceptive enough and a true seduction-hunter who thrived on this very type of interaction).
I expected that this might come up later on in the book, and I was surprised it didn’t. I was also surprised that the experience on the beach with Donato never emerged as truth either.
I could talk about this book forever.
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