The Story of the Lost Child

“Only she can say if, in fact, she has managed to insert herself into this extremely long chain of words to modify my text, to purposely supply the missing links, to unhook others without letting it show, to say of me more than I want, more than I’m able to say. I wish for this intrusion, I’ve hoped for it ever since I began to write our story.”

This passage reflects how closely Elena feels Lila’s influence in her work as a writer. The idea of Lila modifying Elena’s words makes her the perfect, exacting editor. However, the notion that she could show more of Elena than she wants to be seen indicates Elena’s loss of control in Lila’s presence.

“For a moment, as I looked at the dark water and smelled its odor, it seemed that the neighborhood was much farther away than when I had gone to Pisa, to Florence. Even Naples, suddenly, seemed very far from Naples. And Lila from Lila, I felt that beside me I had not her but my own anxieties. Only Nino and I were close, very close.”

Elena feels that the Naples she shares with her lover Nino is different from the city she grew up in. The fantastical idea that this Naples is further away than the more geographically distant Pisa and Florence metaphorically conveys that Elena feels distant from the unconfident girl she was growing up. Elena’s sense of alienation is also shown in the sense of her distance from Lila. The fact that she retains her own anxieties and not Lila’s indicates her feeling that she has definitively left her old friend behind.

“Night after night, I went around recognizing myself in an idea that suggested general disintegration, and, at the same time, new composition.”

Elena’s idea that she is decomposing and recomposing herself on her book tour indicates her general feeling that she is in a state of flux. As she leaves behind the phase of being a devoted wife and mother in favor of a more self-interested existence, she is impressionable and liable to be influenced by everything.