Review: The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

“I said it was drowsiness that had sent me off the road. But I knew very well that drowsiness wasn’t to blame. At the origin was a gesture of mine that made no sense, and which, precisely because it was senseless, I immediately decided not to speak of to anyone. The hardest things to talk about are the ones we ourselves can’t understand.”

On a quiet coastal break in southern Italy, Leda, a divorced and retired English teacher finds herself seeking self-possession and tranquility, but when a brazen Neapolitan family arrive at the beach Leda’s isolation is broken with dangerous consequences.

Whilst Leda cautiously spends her days observing the family, she finds herself drawn to the young mother Nina and her daughter Elena whose attachment to her doll awakens in Leda memories of her own children. As Leda bonds with the quiet distress of the young mother Nina, their affinity becomes a beautiful and distressing example of the difficulties of mothering.

However, when Elena’s doll goes missing, Leda is forced to reckon with her strange impulse to take the doll.

A novel confronting the ugly, unnatural and honest nature of the human condition. Ferrante’s arresting prose is a striking meditation on the difficulties of motherhood and womanhood.