Leda is the protagonist and narrator of The Lost Daughter. At 47 years old, she is an attractive, educated, divorced woman who lives alone. Her two daughters, Marta and Bianca, are grown and have recently moved to Toronto, where her ex-husband, Gianni, lives. Leda is now a professor of English literature and is enjoying her first holiday alone. Although she is ashamed to admit it, Leda feels “miraculously unfettered” without her daughters. She savors her alone time and refers to raising Marta and Bianca as “a difficult job, brought to completion, [that] no longer weighed [her] down” (11). Her relief at the girls’ absence and her reference to motherhood as a “job” are just the first suggestions that Leda is, in her own words, an “unnatural mother,” a condition that drives the action of the novel.

Leda’s maternal ambivalence is rooted in her childhood and her relationship with her own mother. Leda grew up in Naples but pursued an education in Florence, hoping to escape the poverty and unhappiness that plagued the other women in her family. She recalls how her mother “played at being the well-dressed, well-behaved lady” yet slipped back into vulgarity and violence at a moment’s notice (26), flew into frequent rages, and threatened to abandon her daughters.