California Italian Studies

This article sets out to examine the epilogue of L’amica geniale as the site in the novels where Lila can be said to claim true authorship outside the bounds of Elena’s text. It contends that the mysterious return of the lost dolls at the end of the novel should be interpreted as a triumph on Lila’s part, offering warrant for that contention not by claiming that Lila herself orchestrated the return, but rather by positing that, in the novel’s treatment of the life-plot tension, Lila tends to be representative of the former and Elena of the latter. Thus, in marking the closing of the plot, the dolls index a return to “life,” and thus a recalibration of the text’s energies in favor of Lila. The article then employs Peter Brooks’s narrative theory to understand the thermodynamic effects that the return has on the text, proceeding to apply Teresa de Lauretis’s concept of the “space off” to argue that Lila’s victory extends beyond the simple competitiveness that governs her relationship with Elena and into the institution of an entropic, liberatory desire.