Book Review: The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

Oh boy, Elena Ferrante does not let you breathe. Nothing short of a psychological drama, The Lost Daughter sent chills through my body as it progressed. It follows Leda, a mother whose relationship with her adult daughters has flattened into a cold formality. Their relationship feels distant and formal, as though emotional intimacy has long been replaced by obligation.

Ferrante explores how motherhood cannibalizes a woman’s identity. Many women grow up being shaped into the idea of a “suitable wife” and a “suitable mother” long before they are allowed to imagine themselves as individuals. Over time, the identities of self and mother begin to overlap, blur, and compete, leaving little room for a woman to exist outside the role she is expected to perform.

Ideally, in the pursuit of the self, validation is meant to come from within, from one’s own wishes, happiness, and sense of fulfilment. But when a socially imposed role like motherhood interrupts this process, validation shifts outward. It must now come from others, often from many others at once. The child becomes the report card, most often of the mother alone, rarely of the father or the larger family, despite the fact that “it takes a village to raise a child”.

Leda is a woman who has lived through this erosion. Nina, a young mother she encounters while on vacation, becomes a haunting reflection of Leda’s past. Nina has a five-year-old daughter, Elena, who is fiercely attached to her doll, while Elena’s aunt Rosaria is pregnant. These women are not merely characters, they function as embodiments of Leda’s earlier selves, physical reminders of the identities she once inhabited and lost. The novel unfolds through Leda’s psychological upheaval. Memories resurface, guilt mutates, and old epiphanies return with renewed force. The illusion of vacation, of solitude and escape, quickly collapses. Ferrante makes it clear that while a mother may leave her children, she cannot leave behind the fact of motherhood itself. Nina, in particular, becomes the living symbol of Leda’s past. Leda is envious of Nina’s youth and beauty, yet deeply repulsed by her vulnerability. She knows what the future holds for Nina and occasionally feels the urge to warn her. But Nina, like many women in the early stages of motherhood, is still blinded by exhaustion and hope. She believes her sacrifices will eventually lead to stability, fulfilment, and a coherent life. What Nina does not yet realise is that the “village” she relies on, her overbearing Neapolitan family, is also the cage that will slowly erase her. Leda recognises this loss because she has already lived it.

Leda is brutally human throughout the story, as human as she can be after going through the exhausting demands of motherhood. In the story, a prime situation arrives when she steals the doll of the little girl. The doll that Elena clings to from the very beginning. It is through the episode of the doll that the novel reaches its most disturbing register. Her act was impulsive, almost petty, but once done, she cannot undo it. Although Leda repeatedly considers returning the doll, her intentions never translate into action. Thought offers her moments of restraint, but action refuses them. In keeping the doll hidden, she prolongs a small but deliberate cruelty, one that fractures the child’s happiness and unsettles Nina’s peace and fragile sense of motherhood.

When Nina finds out at the end of the novel that Leda stole the doll, she is very very furious. She accuses Leda of stealing her peace and, in that moment, recognises the cruelty and sadism of the act. As readers, the question then arises, do we fully sympathise with Leda? Probably not, and Ferrante does not expect us to.

What is striking for me, is the calm with which Leda confesses. Although the theft has unsettled her deeply since the moment she committed it, her admission is almost detached, as though the action has already passed beyond remorse. Nina’s rage culminates in the hatpin wound she inflicts on Leda. The injury may appear minor, but it feels like a fitting consequence of the harm Leda caused. It does not punish her in any moral or redemptive sense, but inscribes the violence of her act onto her body.

The Lost Daughter is a short read in pages but a long read in mind. Each line takes you deeper into the psyche of a woman who is yet to figure out the wounds she has been through. Take it up if you have the bandwidth; Ferrante is a wonderful writer. It is also a Netflix movie starring Olivia Colman and Dakota Johnson.