Elena Ferrante - The Story of the Lost Child

— Huffington Post (Italy)

“A marvel that is without limits and beyond genre.”

— Il Salvagente

“Elena Ferrante is proving that literature can cure our present ills; it can cure the spirit by operating as an antidote to the nervous attempts we make to see ourselves reflected in the present-day of a country that is increasingly repellent.”

— Il Mattino

“ My Brilliant Friend flows from the soul like an eruption from Mount Vesuvius.”

— La Repubblica

F

ROM

A

USTRALIA

“No one has a voice quite like Ferrante’s. Her gritty, ruthlessly frank novels roar off the page with a barbed fury, like an attack that is also a defense… Ferrante’s fictions are fierce, unsentimental glimpses at the way a woman is constantly under threat, her identity submerged in marriage, eclipsed by motherhood, mythologised by desire. Imagine if Jane Austen got angry and you’ll have some idea of how explosive these works are.”

— John Freeman, The Australian

“One of the most astounding — and mysterious — contemporary Italian novelists available in translation, Elena Ferrante unfolds the tumultuous inner lives of women in her thrillingly menacing stories of lost love, negligent mothers and unfulfilled desires.”

— The Age

“Ferrante bewitches with her tiny, intricately drawn world… My Brilliant Friend journeys fearlessly into some of that murkier psychological territory where questions of individual identity are inextricable from circumstance and the ever-changing identities of others.”

— The Melbourne Review

“The Neapolitan novels move far from contrivance, logic or respectability to ask uncomfortable questions about how we live, how we love, how we singe an existence in a deeply flawed world that expects pretty acquiescence from its women. In all their beauty, their ugliness, their devotion and deceit, these girls enchant and repulse, like life, like our very selves.”

— The Sydney Morning Herald

F

ROM

S

PAIN

“Elena Ferrante’s female characters are genuine works of art… It is clear that her novel is the child of Italian neorealism and an abiding fascination with scene.”

— El Pais

The Cerullo family (the shoemaker’s family):

Fernando Cerullo, shoemaker, Lila’s father.

Nunzia Cerullo, Lila’s mother.

Raffaella Cerullo, called Lina, or Lila. She was born in August, 1944, and is sixty-six when she disappears from Naples without a trace. At the age of sixteen, she marries Stefano Carracci, but during a vacation on Ischia she falls in love with Nino Sarratore, for whom she leaves her husband. After the disastrous end of her relationship with Nino, the birth of her son Gennaro (also called Rino), and the discovery that Stefano is expecting a child with Ada Cappuccio, Lila leaves him definitively. She moves with Enzo Scanno to San Giovanni a Teduccio, but several years later she returns to the neighborhood with Enzo and Gennaro.

Rino Cerullo, Lila’s older brother. He is married to Stefano’s sister, Pinuccia Carracci, with whom he has two sons.

Other children.

The Greco family (the porter’s family):

Elena Greco, called Lenuccia or Lenù. Born in August, 1944, she is the author of the long story that we are reading. After elementary school, Elena continues to study, with increasing success, obtaining a degree from the Scuola Normale, in Pisa, where she meets Pietro Airota. She marries him, and they move to Florence. They have two children, Adele, called Dede, and Elsa, but Elena, disappointed by marriage, begins an affair with Nino Sarratore, with whom she has been in love since childhood, and eventually leaves Pietro and the children.

Peppe, Gianni, and Elisa, Elena’s younger siblings. Despite Elena’s disapproval, Elisa goes to live with Marcello Solara.

The father, a porter at the city hall.

The mother, a housewife.

The Carracci family (Don Achille’s family):

Don Achille Carracci, dealer in the black market, loan shark. He was murdered.

Maria Carracci, wife of Don Achille, mother of Stefano, Pinuccia, and Alfonso. The daughter of Stefano and Ada Cappuccio bears her name.

Stefano Carracci, son of Don Achille, shopkeeper and Lila’s first husband. Dissatisfied by his stormy marriage to Lila, he initiates a relationship with Ada Cappuccio, and they start living together. He is the father of Gennaro, with Lila, and of Maria, with Ada.

Pinuccia, daughter of Don Achille. She is married to Lila’s brother, Rino, and has two sons with him.

Alfonso, son of Don Achille. He resigns himself to marrying Marisa Sarratore after a long engagement.

The Peluso family (the carpenter’s family):

Alfredo Peluso, carpenter and Communist, dies in prison.

Giuseppina Peluso, devoted wife of Alfredo, commits suicide after his death.

Pasquale Peluso, older son of Alfredo and Giuseppina, construction worker, militant Communist.

Carmela Peluso, called Carmen. Pasquale’s sister, she was the girlfriend of Enzo Scanno for a long time. She subsequently marries Roberto, the owner of the gas pump on the stradone, with whom she has two children.

Other children.

The Cappuccio family (the mad widow’s family):

Melina, a widow, a relative of Nunzia Cerullo. She nearly lost her mind after her relationship with Donato Sarratore ended.

Melina’s husband, who died in mysterious circumstances.

Ada Cappuccio, Melina’s daughter. For a long time the girlfriend of Pasquale Peluso, she becomes the lover of Stefano Carracci, and goes to live with him. From their relationship a girl, Maria, is born.

Antonio Cappuccio, her brother, a mechanic. He was Elena’s boyfriend.

Other children.

The Sarratore family (the railway-worker poet’s family):

Donato Sarratore, a great womanizer, who was the lover of Melina Cappuccio. Elena, too, at a very young age, gives herself to him on the beach in Ischia, driven by the suffering that the relationship between Nino and Lila has caused her.

Lidia Sarratore, wife of Donato.

Nino Sarratore, the oldest of the five children of Donato and Lidia, has a long secret affair with Lila. Married to Eleonora, with whom he has Albertino and Lidia, he begins an affair with Elena, who is also married and has children.

Marisa Sarratore, sister of Nino. Married to Alfonso Carracci. She becomes the lover of Michele Solara, with whom she has two children.

Pino, Clelia, and Ciro Sarratore, younger children of Donato and Lidia.

The Scanno family (the fruit-and-vegetable seller’s family):

Nicola Scanno, fruit-and-vegetable seller, dies of pneumonia.

Assunta Scanno, wife of Nicola, dies of cancer.

Enzo Scanno, son of Nicola and Assunta, also a fruit-and-vegetable seller. He was for a long time the boyfriend of Carmen Peluso. He takes on responsibility for Lila and her son, Gennaro, when she leaves Stefano Carracci, and takes them to live in San Giovanni a Teduccio.

Other children.

The Solara family (the family of the owner of the Solara bar-pastry shop):

Silvio Solara, owner of the bar-pastry shop.

Manuela Solara, wife of Silvio, moneylender. As an old woman, she is killed in the doorway of her house.