The Story of the Lost Child (Neapolitan Novels, Book 4)

Product Description<br/><br/>[Read by Hillary Huber]<br/><br/>Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous, the story of a lifelong friendship is told with unmatched honesty and brilliance. The four volumes in this series constitute a long, remarkable story that listeners will return to again and again, and every return will bring with it new revelations.<br/><br/>''Nothing quite like this has ever been published before,'' proclaimed the Guardian about the Neapolitan Novels in 2014. The first book in the series, My Brilliant Friend, was a New York Times bestseller. Book three was a Times bestseller and a Notable Book of the Year. It was named a best book of 2014 twenty-five times, including in the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, the Daily Beast, the Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and the Boston Globe. This final installment in the series gives validation to the New York Times Book Review's opinion of its author, Elena Ferrante, as ''one of the great novelists of our time.''<br/><br/>Here is the dazzling saga of two women: the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults; many of life's great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women's friendship has remained the gravitational center of their lives. Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up -- a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received novels. In this final book, she has returned to Naples. Lila, on the other hand, never succeeded in freeing herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity to the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect her neighborhood. Nearness to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, and unforgettable.<br/><br/><br/><br/>Review<br/><br/>''In Ferrante's fourth and final Neapolitan novel, she reunites Elena, the accomplished writer, with Lila, the indomitable spirit, in their Southern Italian city as they confront maturity and old age, death, and the meaning of life . . . This stunning conclusion further solidifies the Neapolitan novels as Ferrante's masterpiece and guarantees that this reclusive author will remain far from obscure for years to come.'' --Publishers Weekly (starred review)<br/><br/>''Inexorable seismic changes -- in society and in the lives of two female friends -- mark the final volume of Ferrante's Neapolitan series . . . The enigmatic Ferrante, whose identity remains the subject of international literary gossip, has created a mythic portrait of a female friendship in the chthonian world of postwar Naples.'' --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)<br/><br/>''Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels . . . tell a single story with the possessive force of an origin myth.'' --Vogue, praise for the series<br/><br/>''Elena Ferrante is one of the great novelists of our time.'' --New York Times Book Review, praise for the author<br/><br/>About the Author<br/><br/>Elena Ferrante, author of The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, and My Brilliant Friend, among others, is one of Italy's most important and acclaimed contemporary writers. Her true identity is unknown.