The Ferrante Mystery: Why Did Lila Return the Dolls?

A few thoughts on ´The Neapolitan Novels´

Photo by Umanoide on Unsplash

When you first read The Neapolitan Novels, on a scale of 5 to 10, how hard did the ending hit you, the scene with the dolls in Lenu’s mailbox? I’m starting from 5, not 0, because I refuse to believe that scene could leave anyone indifferent.

If you sat frozen for a few moments after turning the final page, your mind racing to grasp the symbolism of that moment. Welcome to the club. I’ve been sitting and processing it through half a dozen re-reads now, and I still can’t arrive at a neat, definitive conclusion.

Let’s treat this like a live book club, shall we? I’ll share my theory on why Lila returned the dolls, and you share yours. For some reason, I feel like we have a better shot at reaching the truth this way than by digging through Reddit threads. (Yes, there are plenty of theories over there, but none of them quite hit the mark for me, they all feel just a bit off).

Only at the very end do we realize that the friendship between these two girls began with a lie.

Don Achille never actually stole the dolls from the cellar. Lila was the one who hid them and kept them for herself, and in doing so, she laid the groundwork for the toxicity that would define her decades-long relationship with Lenu. Both girls felt happy, bonded by a shared adventure. But for only one of them was it reality; for the other, it was a perfectly staged performance.

Throughout her entire life, Lenu never once questioned their childhood legend of the doll-eating Don Achille. Lila, on the other hand, in her twilight years, might have questioned Lenu’s gullibility. She might have suspected that Lenu knew all along about her stolen Tina and Nu, but put on an act and lied right back, just to save their friendship.

If Lila was capable of attributing acting skills equal to her own to Lenu, why stop there? Why not project the rest of her sharpest traits onto her too?

The entire four-book saga is built on an unspoken race between two girls striving for a better life. Most of the time, they aren’t competing against each other, but against external circumstances, running their own distances on separate tracks, not chasing each other down. Yet, the constant presence of the other in their peripheral vision keeps them from slowing down; sometimes, it even grants them a second wind. It’s not a game for the weak-hearted.

Lila ran so hard and for so long that she failed to notice when Lenu finally stepped off the track. And if she didn’t see reality for what it was…what did she see?

Perhaps she saw the exact same vindictiveness and capacity for holding grudges that she possessed herself. The very traits that allowed her to survive the neighborhood on one hand, and miraculously kept her from degenerating into a purely animalistic, ruthless version of herself on the other. Many people wronged Lila throughout her life, and she didn’t retaliate against everyone or every time. But she kept score for each one, always ready to strike back.

What if she believed Lenu was just as vindictive? What if she was certain that Lenu harbored a deeply buried resentment against her for that stolen doll?

Now, a confession is in order: with this next point, my theory completely falls apart, like an egg that stuck to the pan. I am stubbornly trying to scrape these pieces off the Teflon and force them into a whole.

If anyone finds this distasteful: yes, I also think a perfectly fluffy, intact omelet tastes better. I truly didn’t mean to glue mine to the pan. It just sort of happened. But for some reason, I can’t seem to make it work any other way.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if this is edible.

So, attention, point number three: if we accept that Lila viewed Lenu as equally resentful and vengeful as herself, and then multiply that by Lila’s profound mental unraveling… What if, at some point in her life, she reached an unbelievable, completely unrealistic, and irrational conclusion — yet one that is entirely possible for a mentally unstable person? What if she believed that Lenu was the one behind the kidnapping of her daughter, Tina?

Phew, I finally said it. Now you can wince and throw this messy, broken egg into the trash. But if you aren’t feeling too squeamish just yet, let me try to explain it through to the end.

Obviously, Lenu couldn’t have physically stolen Tina; she was right there in front of Lila’s eyes when the child vanished. Obviously, my theory relies heavily on Lila’s warped perception of reality. But what if we try to follow her train of thought?

The adult Lenu envied Lila because her own daughter, Imma, was entirely eclipsed by the shadow of Tina, who shone bright as a sunbeam. That part is a fact, not Lila’s imagination.

The young Lila envied Lenu because Lenu’s doll, Tina, was newer and prettier than Lila’s own tattered Nu. (Envied it so much that she stole it, though eventually concluded that a new friend was better than a new doll).

Lila then names her only daughter after the very doll she stole from Lenu. And no, please don’t remind me that she named the baby after her mother. Who actually remembers her mother’s full name anyway? Nunziatina. So why not call the little girl Nu, drawing a parallel to her own childhood doll? Why “steal” the name of someone else’s?

In Lila’s worldview, such an act is worthy of condemnation at the very least. If Lenu, in her eyes, is vindictive and holding a grudge, while also envying Lila because of her daughter, how might she retaliate?

Perhaps she didn’t even have to do anything extraordinary. She just had to fail to act. Remember the episode with the magazine photo, where Tina was mistakenly labeled as Lenu’s daughter? For some reason, Lenu never corrected this blunder for the general public. How high do you think the odds become that someone in a volatile, dangerous Naples might decide to kidnap the child of a famous, wealthy writer after seeing that publication?

I’ll probably throw this piece of the egg into the trash myself. The assumption is worth next to nothing, as there is no record of anyone ever approaching Lenu with a ransom demand for Tina’s return.

Though, if you are a paranoid Lila, it would be effortless to imagine that Lenu could have simply ignored those demands. Just like she ignored the mistake in the magazine caption.

I think you can already see the root of my theory regarding the return of the dolls. “Here is what I stole from you, now give me back what is mine.”

The most common theory I’ve encountered on Reddit is that Lila’s gesture was an act of sentimentality, a way to highlight how much her friendship with Lenu meant to her. She erased every trace of her existence except for those two dolls, leaving them as a keepsake for her best friend.

Except it feels to me like the people who favor this version have never been mothers. Or, if they have, they’ve never truly imagined the horror of losing a child.

Lila spent years grieving, slipping into madness. Tina was the ultimate, flawless object of her love: she never disappointed her, never hurt her, never broke her heart. Tina was supposed to be the finish line of the race she had run parallel to Lenu for so long. But the ribbon was suddenly yanked away, and the runner no longer knew where to go, or why.

By dropping those dolls into Lenu’s mailbox, Lila is still running. There is only one fork in the road left that she hasn’t dared to take over all these years, the last possible path, after which lies either the finish line, or the abyss.

“Here is your Tina, now give me back mine.”

A mother’s grief is the deepest, darkest abyss in the universe. No matter how unlikable I found Lila throughout all four books, I never wished this ending for her. She was a force capable of changing the world through her charisma, by sheer willpower alone. I want to believe that a fraction of that power remained within her.

I want to believe that that very evening, after the dolls were returned, just a few blocks away from Lenu’s building, a youthful face bent over an unconscious elderly woman on the pavement. And it would be the exact face she had spent so many years searching for in the crowds.

I want to believe that the returned doll will fulfill its magical purpose. That it will dispel the one small childhood lie that started a lifelong story. That it will push back the darkness of a mother’s grief, making the universe one dark abyss lighter.

May all the Tinas find their way back home, to the ones who need them most of all.