Best of the Best-of Lists
A compilation of books cited on multiple year-end lists
Best Fiction
The Journal reviewed best-of lists from 12 sources to discover the most-cited books of 2015. Among the year’s best novels, Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies came out on top with seven mentions.
The Story of the Lost Child – 5 mentions
By Elena Ferrante; translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein
“How should we classify Elena Ferrante’s magnificently complicated Neapolitan quartet? The three previous titles in the series—“My Brilliant Friend” (2012), “The Story of a New Name” (2013) and “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” (2014)—defy categorization. Are they genre or literary fiction? Soap operas? Political epics? Some form of memoir? With the arrival of Ann Goldstein’s supple English translation of the fourth and final volume, “The Story of the Lost Child,” the question of form, in all its guises, becomes even more involving…” — Elizabeth Lowry