Lenù comes to the end of the very long story we are reading, recounting as she and Lila go through their prime as adults, with parallel pregnancies in their early 30s, and eventually the difficult transition into old age.

Ferrante does unsettling very, very well. Reading this series (as well as The Days of Abandonment) is like taking  stiff shots of very different, equally strong emotions, and then realizing you're drunk, and stumbling through a sinister amusement park. In a good way, I swear!

I found Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay and The Story of the Lost Child to be less enchanting than the earlier installments of the series, if only because I haven't yet been through most of those life stages yet and so the pings of deep recognition or identification were less frequent. But I think the more time I spend on this planet seeing sad and strange things happen, the more I will recognize.

Hats off to Ann Goldstein for this very long project of translation.