The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante is the fourth and final book in the Neapolitan Novel quartet, which documents the lives and friendship of Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo. The book appeared in Italian in 2014 and was translated into English by Ann Goldstein in 2015. In 2016, it made the International Booker Prize Longlist. The quartet has achieved worldwide renown, causing the pseudonymous author to become a household name. In her New York Times review, Michiko Kakutani writes, how “The novels are beautifully enmeshed, one with another, as if Ms. Ferrante had the entire quartet in her head from the start. There is something musical about the intertwined lives of Elena and Lila, like Lila’s cyclical view of Naples and its history” (Kakutani). Kakutani also praises Ferrante’s grasp on “the day-to-day texture of women’s lives: the effort it takes to hold onto some core sense of self in the face of endless, banal household tasks — diapers and dusting and cleaning the kitchen — and the demands of time and attention made by husbands and lovers” (Kakutani).

Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous writer who has been writing and publishing in Italian since 1992. Although there have been media attempts to uncover Ferrante’s identity, as of 2022, the truth remains concealed. In a Guardian interview with Deborah Orr, Ferrante asserts that her motivation for remaining anonymous is “not to feel tied down to what could become one’s public image. To concentrate exclusively and with complete freedom on writing and its strategies” (Orr). Judith Shulevitz, writing in The Atlantic, considers that Ferrante’s quartet should “be seen as one of the first great works of post-authorial literature,” making Ferrante a pioneer of a trend that runs counter to the present cult of the author (Shulevitz).

This study guide uses the Europa Editions e-book edition and is translated by Ann Goldstein.

Content Warning: This novel depicts death by suicide.

Plot Summary

The Story of the Lost Child begins when the protagonists Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo are 32 years old. It is set in the aftermath of Elena’s decision to leave her husband Pietro Airota for her teenage crush Nino Sarratore. Lila is critical of this decision, stating that in leaving Pietro and the privileges of their Northern Italian life, Elena is irreparably damaging their daughters, Dede and Elsa. Elena, however, is too much in love to heed Lila’s threat or that of Adele her mother-in-law to destroy her career as a writer. Instead, she goes to Naples to be close to Nino, while she attempts to evade Lila’s influence.

In Elena’s absence, Lila has become the head of Basic Sight, a computer company. She is also a counterforce to the Camorrist Solaras, a Mafia-style crime family that intimidates and threatens the neighborhood. Lila, who was Nino’s former lover and bears a grudge against him for leaving her, has him followed. She informs Elena that he has continued to live with his wife Eleonora and is even expecting a child with her. Elena considers leaving Nino, but with nowhere else to go, she finds herself back in Naples and agrees that she will share him with Eleonora. Lila then suggests to Elena that she should fulfill her long-term wish of having Nino’s child, while she gets pregnant with her partner Enzo. During her pregnancy, Elena gets closer to Lila and drifts apart from Nino, who is unreliable and gives undue attention to other women.

The two women give birth to daughters: Elena to Imma and Lila to Tina. Meanwhile, Elena’s mother is dying. Despite their fractious and estranged relationship, Elena feels closer to her mother than ever and is inspired by this to revive her writing career.

By chance, Elena catches Nino having sex with Silvana, the woman who is supposed to be looking after her children. Elena leaves him and elicits Lila’s help to find an apartment in the same building as her. Lila reveals that the list of Nino’s sexual conquests is enormous and that he continued to make advances on Lila, both before and after he got together with Elena. Utterly disillusioned, Elena struggles to manage her domestic life and career and is forced to hand in an old manuscript to meet her editor’s deadline. The book, which is about the impoverished, corrupt Naples of Elena’s youth, becomes a hit. Although Elena is a successful author, she worries that her daughter Imma is not as advanced as Lila’s daughter Tina. Later, a photographer who comes to do a publicity shoot features and captions Tina as Elena’s daughter instead of Imma. Elena realizes that Imma’s diffidence in part stems from a feeling of neglect at the hands of her father Nino. She thus invites Nino to come and spend a day with them and focus exclusively on Imma. To her fury, Elena realizes that Nino is spending his time talking to Lila. In turn, Lila is so absorbed in Nino that she has stopped paying attention to Tina, who vanishes.

While their search for Tina is extensive, the little girl never turns up, and there is no evidence that she is either alive or dead. Consequently, Lila exists in a state of ambiguous loss, where she cannot let go of the thought that Tina might still be alive and searching for her. In this state, she alters between generosity and meanness to Elena and her daughters and attacks and eventually sends away her partner Enzo. It is also implied that Lila is writing a masterful work about Naples, and Elena is taunted by the possibility that it will be greater than anything she could ever produce.

Elena eventually leaves Naples and makes a life with Imma in Turin. From there, she breaks her promise to Lila and writes about her in a novel titled A Friendship. Lila hereby shuns Elena. Eventually, Lila disappears, in a gesture which takes readers to the beginning of the first Neapolitan novel My Brilliant Friend, when Lila’s son Gennaro reports to Elena that his mother has attempted to die by suicide. Meanwhile, life for Elena continues. As her career waxes and wanes, she becomes a grandmother and continues to write about Lila, believing that her role is to stop her friend from vanishing.