

"Where is it written that lives should have a meaning?" Lila asks Elena, disparaging her friend's career choice in the process. The two friends face the chaos of a corrupt and decaying Naples while the lives of the people closest to them%E2%80%94plagued by abandonment, imprisonment, murder, and betrayal%E2%80%94spiral out of control.


In Ferrante's fourth and final Neapolitan novel, she reunites Elena, the accomplished writer, with Lila, the indomitable spirit, in their Southern Italian city as they confront maturity and old age, death, and the meaning of life.
