The Story of the Lost Child

Tall, thin, and with dark features, Lila Cerullo is the physical opposite of Elena. While she often neglects her appearance, Elena is continually haunted by the fact that “if she wanted” Lila “could still be very beautiful” (92). Her beauty and extraordinary intelligence captivate both Nino and Michele Solara, the Camorrist who became obsessed with her, to the severe detriment of his mental health. She is also the confidante and role-model of Alfonso Caracci, the openly queer man who remakes himself in her image. The perception—shared by Solaras and Elena’s mother’s—that Lila is the worthier of the two friends threatens to cast Elena as an irrelevant outsider. Still, Lila’s need to have Elena as a friend and competitor causes her to employ various stratagems to bring her closer, including making herself indispensable to her daughters, spying on Nino, encouraging Elena’s pregnancy, and finding the neighborhood apartment. While Elena admires Lila, Lila also seeks to claim what Elena has. She seeks the attention of Pietro, even maintaining a private correspondence with him, and captures Nino’s attention at the expense of looking after her daughter. Her envy of Elena’s career manifests in her refusal to read or compliment her work. Her decision to discover Naples exhaustively for herself and write about it follows Elena’s successful publication about the city.

Still, Lila’s greatest sadness is in motherhood. While she has ensured that both her children, Tina and Gennaro, gain from the advantage of her intelligence, she sees how the corrupt neighborhood diminishes their potential. Even before Tina is physically lost, Lila fears her becoming like Gennaro who, mired in addiction, becomes a lost son to his mother.

Tall, thin, and handsome, Nino Sarratore is Elena’s lover, Lila’s former lover, and the desired object of numerous other women. He is also the husband of Eleonora, a woman with whom he has two children. Nino’s life began in the same humble Neapolitan neighborhood as Elena, but he rises to become an academic and a politician in the Socialist Party.

Nino, who struggles to put his ideas into words, is perennially envious of Elena and Lila. He even admits that he destroyed one of Elena’s high-school articles so that it would not outshine his inferior literary talent. While Nino is intelligent and eloquent, he is also opportunistic and willing to use his charm and influence on women to rise professionally. His ability to maintain multiple relationships ensures that he continues to profit from the women’s talents and connections. The only woman he risked his profession for was Lila, for whom he gave up the advantages of being ingratiated with the Galianis, the high-born family of his high-school girlfriend Nadia. Lila accuses him of “the worst kind of meanness, that of superficiality,” a trait exhibited in his treatment of Elena and his neglect of his family of origin. Nevertheless, she is still wholly absorbed in him, to the extent that she takes her attention off her precious daughter and thus loses a version of herself to him again, as she did earlier when they were lovers (246).

Lila’s ability to be taken in by Nino, despite hating him, is mirrored by Pietro’s parents, the Airotas. Although they openly despise Nino for wrecking their son’s marriage, the Airotas are converted to his cause and agree to help him. By showing Nino’s power through others’ reactions to him, rather than through direct depictions of his actions, Ferrante leaves the source of Nino’s charm mysterious and thus makes it seem more irresistible and dangerous.

Elena, however, completely loses her attraction to Nino, realizing that he is self-interested, neglectful of his responsibilities, and increasingly like his father, the notorious womanizer Donato Sarratore. Donato was the man who molested Elena at aged 15 and then later took her virginity. Readers of the previous novels, who know the extent of Nino’s hatred for his father and his campaign to be the opposite of him, will appreciate the irony of his fate. However, despite this personal failure, Ferrante casts Nino as a ruthless survivor who gets promoted and comes back from scandal due to his charm and connections. He is thus part of the corrupting force that, in the author’s view, keeps Italy down.

Elena’s husband Pietro Airota is from an established middle-class Northern Italian family. Like his father Guido, he is a classics professor. While academically intelligent and a diligent scholar, Pietro is less handsome and charming than Nino. Elena also left him because he did not do enough to help with childcare and forced her to sacrifice her career for his.

In this novel, Pietro continues to prioritize his career, sending the children to his parents and eventually to Elena in Naples. That said, he is a diligent father who makes a concerted attempt to see his children. Ironically, while Elena left him for Nino, in the full course of the novel he appears to be a better father and human being by comparison. Although Pietro temporarily moves on to partner with his young student, Doriana, and then re-marries when he moves to America, it seems that Elena, whom he dedicates his book to, remains the love of his life, as his anger towards her turns to fondness.

Lila’s partner, childhood friend, and co-parent Enzo Scanno is a man she gets along with, rather than the one she desires. The two are successful business partners at Basic Sight who both possess keen mathematical knowledge. Fueled by a passion he has cherished since childhood, Enzo devotes his life to Lila and defers to her plans. He is continually attentive to Tina, lavishing on her all the love that Lila will not accept. His love for his daughter is expressed in the act of magnifying the image of her in the paper and pinning it up in his office.

Although Enzo attempts to console Lila after Tina’s disappearance, his own devastation means that he begins to challenge and argue with her. Elena believes “it is hard to imagine a man with a finer sensibility than his”; however, even his reserves of compassion are exhausted by Lila, and in leaving to begin a new life in Milan, he surrenders the responsibility for Lila’s well-being to Elena (411). Enzo is a sympathetic character, and the harshness of his fate—which involves loving a difficult woman who does not return his affections, being imprisoned for two years despite insufficient evidence, and losing a daughter—reflect Ferrante’s conception of an unjust world, where punishments are distributed unfairly.

Elena’s eldest daughter Dede grows to physically resemble her father, becoming tall and full-bodied. She also shares his earnest, serious nature and unswerving devotion to a single love object. While her sister Elsa entertains a succession of suitors, Dede focuses on school and harbors a flame for her childhood crush, Gennaro. While wayward Gennaro seems unsuited to diligent Dede, she maintains that he is a victim of circumstances and that Lila is unjustly cruel to him. Behind Dede’s accusation that Elena only cares about her work and Lila lies a subconscious envy of Lila’s influence and the origin of her crusade to save Gennaro.

Dede emerges as naïve when she is unable to see that her sly sister Elsa has been plotting against her to win the affections of Gennaro for herself. Elsa does so only because she sees Dede cares for him. Dede, who feels the full force of this betrayal, sees no viable way to escape her sister’s shadow and her mother’s indifference, other than to go to her father in America. There, away from Lila’s sphere of influence, she refocuses on her identity and becomes an academic like her father. She marries a serious man, who may resemble her father, and embarks on the sort of stable life that Pietro might have hoped for with Elena.

Elena’s second daughter Elsa is sly and effortlessly intelligent. While her sister Dede lays her cards on the table and studies hard, Elsa is the sort of person who fails the midterm but aces the final exam. Similarly, while Dede’s passion for Gennaro is apparent, Elsa works her way through a league of suitors before stealing Gennaro from her sister. More fickle than her sister, Elsa tires of Gennaro and manages to win back into her sister’s affections when she moves to America and begins a new life there.

The relationship between the sisters mirrors Elena and Lila’s dynamic in that each acts in response to the other. Thus, Gennaro gains value in Elsa’s eyes because Dede liked him first, as does the prospect of going to America. While Elsa is outwardly kind and collaborative with Dede, she is mean to Imma, doing her best to make her feel like an imposter due to her father’s indifference and Tina’s precociousness. Only Lila can contain Elsa’s sly, selfish nature when she violently admonishes her for her treatment of Gennaro.

Imma is Elena and Nino’s daughter. While Imma receives more affection than Elena’s earlier children, Elena constantly judges her as inferior when she compares her to Lila’s precocious daughter Tina. However, given that outsiders respond positively to Imma, and the child psychologist declares that she is developmentally typical, the projection of inferiority is in Elena’s head. Imma has fair features like Elena and shares her passivity in giving into her more dominant friend against her will.

Still, Imma feels the slight of paternal neglect, demonstrated by her tantrum that no prince is going to rescue her. When Elena reintroduces Nino into her life, Imma puts him on a pedestal. Throughout her life, the little that Nino gives Imma is precious to her, and she seeks to maintain her illusions that he is a great man, despite evidence to the contrary. Although Imma adores Tina and misses her when she disappears, in the long-term, she does not appear to be scarred by her friend’s sudden loss. On the contrary, she thrives in the absence of constant comparisons to Tina. Here, Ferrante shows that while Elena benefited from being compared to a brilliant friend, Imma benefited from an absence of competition and a concentration of resources on herself.

Tina is Lila and Enzo’s daughter and the lost child of the novel’s title. She physically resembles Lila, having a “fantastic face” that causes the photographer to prefer her to Elena’s daughter (280). With an advanced intellect for her age, Tina is able to write her name at the age of three and continually asks intelligent questions. Tina inspires devotion in her mother and father and knows how to command the attention of other adults, who do not have to modify their discourse to communicate with her. When the adults insist that Tina should lower the lid on her “vivacity” to let Imma shine, Tina becomes “as if stunned”, not knowing why they have asked her to be less brilliant (323). Arguably, this occurs on the day she wanders off, as Lila is holding Imma, while Nino is concertedly not paying her any attention. The wandering off might have been a miniature gesture of revenge on Tina’s part; however, it escalates enormously when she disappears. Here, Ferrante shows how seemingly petty squabbles for control between friends and family can have devastating effects.

Later, Lila speculates that Tina could have been kidnapped because she was mistaken for Elena’s daughter due to the mistaken newspaper caption. Lila’s supposition indicates her belief that Tina could have been Elena’s daughter in spirit, eventually ascending to equal public renown.

Gennaro is Lila’s son with her first husband, Stefano Caracci. However, as he was conceived around the time that Lila and Nino were lovers, Lila suspected that he might be Nino’s. Later, when his features start to resemble Stefano’s, his paternity is certain. Although Gennaro’s paternity is confirmed before the beginning of the final book in the quartet, Lila still romanticizes the time when she thought that Gennaro was Nino’s child and the idea that he might have been intelligent like Nino, rather than average like Stefano.

Although Gennaro was a good student in his youth, by the time of the fourth novel, he is failing school and lacking in assertiveness. Tina’s precociousness reminds Lila that Gennaro was also clever at her age, which stands as a warning that the neighborhood can corrupt the most promising starts and the best parental intentions. Gennaro also becomes a type of lost child in the novel when he turns to drugs and is incapable of finding a job. Still, the idea that he might have some charm is reflected in the unswerving devotion of Dede and the attraction of Elsa to him. Just as Elsa benefits from Lila’s harsh judgement, Gennaro finds solace in Elena’s kindness, as each mother plugs the gaps in her friend’s parenting.

However, when both girls abandon Gennaro and go to America, he is left to drift in his hometown. His fate marks the apotheosis of Lila’s misfortunes as a mother.

Elena’s relationship with her mother, a mother of four and housewife, undergoes a change in the final novel of the quartet. Elena starts by looking down on her mother, considering her the opposite of the kind of woman she wants to be. This reaches its nadir when her mother expressly comes down to Florence to beat and chastise Elena for wanting to leave Pietro for Nino. She achieves extraordinary eloquence in her fury and is unafraid to drop to the depths of despair or refer to the most vulgar notions. For example, she says, “Sarratore’s son is bound to stick you with the clap and syphilis, what did I do wrong to come to a day like this, oh God, oh God, oh God, I want to die this minute, I want to die now” (64). Thus, Elena’s mother seems, in Adele’s words, “out of control,” according to the definition of those who wish to maintain boundaries and evoke propriety (89). However, the reader roots for her because, in insisting on calling Nino “Sarratore’s son” and maintaining he is no different from his father, she has more foresight than Elena. She also becomes a sympathetic character in her preference of Elena to all other children, and her physical decline runs alongside Elena’s disappointment to her. No passive martyr, Immacolata makes Elena aware that she is responsible for her condition.

Elena’s attempt to atone for the disappointment occurs when she is the most attentive nurse at her mother’s bedside. However, she finds that her mother is being used as a bargaining chip by Elisa and the Solaras who, by moving her to a private clinic and commanding the nurses, attempt to gain power over Elena. While Elena’s mother enjoys the attention she has craved in other parts of her life, she devotes herself to Elena and asserts that she and Lila have a matriarchal duty to protect the neighborhood from the Solaras. This inspires Elena to become more autonomous and even acquire her mother’s trademark limp after her third pregnancy. While she initially feared and despised her mother’s limp, she now cherishes it as a way of remaining close to her mother.

In contrast to her mother, Elena’s father, a former porter, is a weak, passive man. Although he outlives his wife, he is dominated by Elisa and the Solaras and does nothing to stand up to them.

Elena’s younger sister Elisa lives with and then marries Marcello Solara. Contemptuous of Elena for being her mother’s favorite child and for her education, Elisa aims to exert her influence as part of the Solara clan. Still, she blames Lila most of all for the “worries” that they have had since the death of her would-be mother-in-law Manuela Solara (121). While Elisa enjoys the trappings of wealth and power that being a Solara entails, she feels trapped by motherhood and the fear that Marcello’s enemies will seek retribution.

Elisa’s ability to start fresh in a new town and marriage after Marcello’s death indicate the survival instincts at her core.

To Elena, her former mother-in-law Adele Airota initially seems the “mother figure I’d always felt the need for” (89). Adele works in publishing, has numerous contacts, and helps Elena advance in her career. Adele too has had affairs; however, she has managed them discreetly and did not allow them to interfere with her marriage. For Adele, appearance is more important than reality.

However, when Elena leaves Pietro, all of Adele’s reservations against this Neapolitan imposter become apparent. Adele feels betrayed and expresses her venom against Elena by describing her as a corruptive influence on her granddaughters. While Elena’s mother’s fury is explosive, Adele’s is underhanded; for example, she makes the publication of Elena’s work difficult. When the book about Naples that Adele discouraged turns out to be a success, Adele’s controlling influence is revealed as superfluous to Elena’s literary success. In the full course of events, aligning with her mother and Lila’s sensibility over Adele’s helps Elena’s career. Still, Adele reemerges as a counterforce to Elena towards the end of the novel, when she hosts Elsa and Gennaro and allows them to live together.

Pietro’s father Guido Airota is an eminent academic in Northern Italy. Although he maintains a calm veneer in the face of his son’s marital struggles, his anger at Elena and others with working-class origins like Nino, who are making inroads on what was previously the province of the middle-class, manifests in disparaging comments about Elena’s misuse of Sophocles or about Nino having intelligence without tradition. Nevertheless, Guido allows himself to be hoodwinked by Nino later in the novel and helps to promote his work. He also finds himself on the long list of those accused of corruption alongside Nino.

Mariarosa Airota is Pietro’s older sister and Elena’s former sister-in-law. An art history academic in Milan, Mariarosa is a feminist who lives outside of the nuclear family structure. She hosts debates in her home and provides a refuge for people like Elena, her daughters, and Franco Mari, Elena’s ex-boyfriend who was blinded by fascists and becomes severely depressed. Elena learns that Mariarosa loves Franco; however, when Franco dies by suicide in Mariarosa’s absence, all trust is broken between them. Mariarosa’s expulsion of Elena and her daughters from her matriarchal home gives Elena no choice but to return to Nino and Naples.

Marcello Solara is Elisa Greco’s husband and half of the Solara Camorrist brotherhood. The Solaras have long been the wealthiest and most powerful family in Elena’s neighborhood, and their mother Manuela Solara’s little red book, with its listing of everyone indebted to the family, was long feared. Throughout the Neapolitan quartet, Marcello and Michele alternate in their dominance, and each for a brief spell ceded their power because of a passion for Lila. For the greatest part of this novel, Marcello is the most dominant brother, asserting his power both by threatening Lila and by taking over Elena’s mother’s care. However, at the end of the novel, both he and his brother are defeated by an unidentifiable assassin, thus ending their family’s dominance.

Michele Solara is married with sons. However, his obsession with Lila severely damaged his mental health and led to him ceding his grip on power to his brother. For a while, he was obsessed with Alfonso Caracci, a man whom Lila helped to look like her. Michele’s anti-gay disgust with both Alfonso and himself, leads to him badly beating Alfonso. Although he is absent and erratic for most of the novel, he declares himself Lila’s enemy when he punches her at Alfonso’s funeral. He seeks to prove that he has “truly stopped loving her,” while Lila threatens him and Marcello with being “dead already” (307).

Michele is intimidated by those more educated than him. He seeks to counter this by patronizing the local library and insisting that his sons read a book a month, as he makes a performance of them being learned. He imagines a future generation where “everyone keeps his eyes on the books,” and people are as good and democratic as Elena (366). Interestingly, following the disappearance of Tina, Michele remains close to his brother and keeps a low profile in the month before his death.

Alfonso Caracci is the brother of Elena’s first husband Stefano and the husband of Marisa (née Sarratore), Nino’s sister. However, his marriage is a thin veneer for his true identity as a gay man. He is attracted to Michele Solara and obsessed with Lila, the woman who attracts Michele, to the point that he styles himself as her and wears her clothes. While Elena believes that Lila molded Alfonso after herself and that they have a mysterious bond, she is uncertain as to the exact nature of their relationship. While Alfonso makes Lila his confidante and relies upon her for work when Michele dismisses him, he is deeply grieved by his lonely predicament. His failure to subscribe to the neighborhood’s heterosexism makes him the target of violent attacks and eventually leads to him being beaten to death.

Elena’s former boyfriend Antonio Capuccio lived in Germany with his German wife and three children before the Solaras summoned him back to the neighborhood. However, he is also Lila’s right-hand man and goes on errands such as spying on Nino, a man he hates because Elena preferred him all the time they were going out. His pursuit of Nino on this occasion is no less hot, and the lovemaking between Antonio and Elena that follows his divulgement of Nino’s crimes indicates the end of an era and a small victory for Antonio.

The Communist Pasquale Peluso was Elena and Lila’s childhood friend. He is on the run ever since he became a suspect in the murder of Manuela Solara. His sister Carmen and friend Enzo are involved in hiding him, and Elena’s exclusion from this circle of trust indicates the distance between her and her neighborhood peers. When Pasquale eventually goes to jail, he is stoic and studies towards a degree. Elena, who visits him in old age, finds him more stable and handsome than Nino.

Pasquale’s accomplice Nadia Galiani is the daughter of Elena’s high-school teacher Professor Galiani and the woman Nino left for Lila. Nadia, who grew up with the privileges of middle-class life, resents Elena, who came from humble origins yet turned into the daughter Nadia’s mother would have preferred. Nino evokes Nadia’s endless rage when he warns Elena to tell Lila to be careful of her. Although Nadia is Pasquale’s accomplice, her middle-class origins are useful as she flees for safety abroad and, by “throwing all the blame on Pasquale,” negotiates a lighter jail sentence for herself (384).