Two books about enduring friendships, both beautiful and heartwarming are very different—one about two female friends and the other about four male friends.  The first is encumbered by families, children and difficult choices between home and career; the second is about finding the right friends and keeping them.

The Story Of The Lost Child is the fourth and final book in Elena Ferrante’s sprawling, complicated Neapolitan quartet (translated by Ann Goldstein). Those who haven’t read the earlier three - My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013) and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014) would find it a bit difficult to pick up the threads of the many criss-crossing stories, even though the author provides a detailed cast of characters – the various families and their connections.

A bit about Elena Ferrante—the most famous writer of Italian bestsellers writes under an assumed name and her identity has been a closely guarded secret ever since she first began to publish in 1992.  From her books it can be assumed that she is a native of Naples, and that the book may have some autobiographical elements.

The narrator of The Story Of The Lost Child is also a writer called Elena Greco, who grew up in a place just referred to as “the neighbourhood” but from her descriptions it is clear that it is slum, full of crime, poverty, and thwarted ambition, ruled by the Solaras family.  Woven into the soap opera of the friendship between Elena and Lina, is an overview of Italian politics, the social and economic upheavals in the country, and of course, organized crime—the Italians did ‘invent’ the Mafia.

In this book, Elena is facing the aftermath of leaving her husband Pietro and abandoning her daughters, Dede and Elisa, for the sake of the handsome and rich Nino, who was once Lina’s lover.  The situation is rather civilized, Pietro’s mother Adele looks after the kids as Elena traipses around on work related trips, and the estranged couple continue to live under the same roof. 

Her friend Lila, on the other hand, never stepped out of Naples and the “neighbourhood” but is an entrepreneur, an early mover in the field of computers. She has also left her husband and is living with the kindly Enzo and her son Gennaro by her first husband.  

When Elena hits a low patch in her career and her relationship with Nino, she moves back into the neighbourhood, that she worked so hard to escape from, using her education as a springboard. She gets an apartment just above Lila’s, this proximity to her past helps her writing and she is soon on the road to success, even as she seems to fail as a daughter and a mother.  Even though Ferrante writes with understanding and empathy about the position of women in Italian society, she still can’t help judge Elena for choosing a career over family. The turmoil her daughters are put through and how they turn out because of it, points to Elena’s neglect of them. The fathers are just bystanders who, like Pietro, are providers, or like Nino distant and glamorous, occasional visitors and bearers of gifts. 

Lila takes on the responsibility of Elena’s daughters, as she travels and chases fame.  Both Elena and Lila find themselves pregnant at the same time and give birth to daughters Imma and Tina. It is Lila’s tragedy that is at the core of this book, and around it, life in the teeming neighbourhood goes on. 

In Hanya Yanagihara’s a award-winning, much feted novel A Little Life, four young roommates in college form a bond that lasts all their lives. The writer covers their journey from childhood to adulthood that includes remarkably successful careers. They are all very different in background and temperament, but something binds them tightly to each other. 

Willem Ragnarsson, is the son of a Wyoming ranch hand, who works as a waiter in a posh restaurant while he waits to become an actor and soon attains stardom; Malcolm Irvine, the mixed race son of a wealthy family, becomes a celebrated architect; Jean-Baptiste (JB) Marion, is the son of Haitian immigrants, and after a few low-end jobs becomes a famous painter. However, the fulcrum around whom these lives revolve is Jude St. Francis, a lawyer and mathematician, whose past is a secret even to his friends. But he seems physically and emotionally damaged and won’t confide even the smallest problem to anyone—and he has been buried under a mountain of them. 

Gradually it is revealed that Jude was dumped on a garbage can by unknown parents, and grew up in a monastery, because nobody else would have him.  As the lives of the friends unfold—parties, romances, holidays, squabbles, career paths—Yanagihara uncovers layer by layer of Jude’s past—and it is horrific.  The reader can only guess at the abuse he suffered at the monastery, but the real reasons for his physical and mental troubles comes much later, and the reader can only wonder at what inner reserves of strength Jude might have deployed to survive.

He is lucky in the way how people he meets after his monstrous childhood and adolescence give him nothing but love and care—particularly Willem, his doctor Andy, the couple Harold and Julie who adopt his as their son, and many other buddies and colleagues who gather together to pull him out of every crisis—and the thick novel (800 odd pages)— is indulgent in creating fresh traumas for Jude. So damaged is he, that he can only face his mental demons by cutting himself and hurting his body even more. 

As Jude suffering increases, as well as the disruptions in his friends’ lives, the novel abandons its optimistic tone and plunges into darkness, cruelty, and unbearable despair, that even overwhelming love cannot quite obliterate.

That’s why, in spite of its gloomy undertones, some harrowing passages of sexual abuse, and overdose of hysterical melodrama, A Little Life is a profoundly optimistic and life-affirming book. And one that puts friendship on an impossibly high pedestal. Can ordinary people love so unconditionally? Can real-life friendships be so selfless and pure?