The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante review – a frighteningly insightful finale

In this last instalment, the Neopolitan series mutates into a weightier exploration of the sinister psychology of friendship

The Catch-22 that ensures we don’t know why Elena Ferrante chooses to keep her “real” identity a secret because we can’t ask her, or even construct our own theories from extraneous biographical information, isn’t much offset by the explanations she gives in occasional written interviews. Her reasons – she’d prefer to let her work speak for itself, she doesn’t wish to court notoriety, hasn’t she done enough by writing the books in the first place? – are impeccable, impermeable and possibly even true. But, as her quartet of Neapolitan novels translated by Ann Goldstein, now concluded with The Story of the Lost Child, forcefully demonstrates, the truth is often only half the story.

Related: Elena Ferrante: the global literary sensation nobody knows

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