Making some kind of order out of chaos is one of the main things we all do, whether that consists in writing a journal entry like this one, working on a novel or even, simply, by making sure the dishes and laundry are being seen to, or that the kids are sent off the school and that everything is okay with your friends and relations, as you send them that missive by phone, email or WhatsApp – a missive that’s been a long time coming but which, now that you’ve sent it, you feel has lifted a weight – however tangential – off your back.

But whatever order you manage to create always ends up being temporary; it’s a order that needs to be worked on like a gym routine, otherwise you risk stagnating or – worse – devolving into a somehow ‘lesser’ state of being (a conflicting metaphor given the weight-loss-laden image of the gym routine, I know).

Having finally arrived at the fourth and concluding volume of Elena Ferrante’s incredible ‘Neapolitan Novels’, I’m getting the creeping sense that this observation above – the idea that we’re always dogged by a ‘lack’ that needs to be filled, by an order that needs to be imposed – is one of those rare facts of life that transcends race, gender, nationality or social class. Sure, the details of it may vary – organising your life with a view to simply having a better ‘work life balance’ vs organising your life in a way as to ensure your family is safe from the grip of a dictatorial militia are two entirely different things – but I’m increasingly warming to the idea that being framed, compromised and belittled by the forces of chaos is one of the more consistent elements of the Great Human Tragedy.

In the final novel of Ferrante’s much-celebrated quartet – one that I’m only just halfway through at the moment so please, no spoilers – we finally get a full explanation of Lila’s theory of “dissolving boundaries”; hinted at several times across the scope of the novels, with a superlative grace and tact by this expert writer, who works through the tangled nerve centres of life to pluck out key details in a way that appears to conform to the inherent randomness of the life-flow, though of course it’s anything but.

“She said that the outlines of things and people were delicate, that they broke like cotton thread. She whispered that for her it had always been that way, an object lost its edges and poured into another, into a solution of heterogenous materials, a merging and mixing. She exclaimed that she had always had to struggle to believe that life had firm boundaries, for she had known since she was a child that it was not like that — it was absolutely not like that — and so she couldn’t trust in their resistance to being banged and bumped”

The torrential confession, the sudden and thorough explanation of a psychological bugbear that had been hanging on to Lila — since birth, apparently — arrives right after a literal earthquake that strands her and Elena — our narrator and Lila’s life-long best friend — in a car, as they wait for the chaos to subside enough so that they can at least get home, check on their loved ones.

It’s a moment in which what was previously repressed can no longer be held in, when even the vulnerability of the previously controlled Lila comes pouring out. The true kicker comes just after the above passage, however, as Lila describes how this very tendency — a kind of Imp of the Perverse that dominates her worldview — has never really allowed her to experience moments of calm or beauty for a long enough time.

Because of the merciless gaze she’s burdened with, she cannot help but unmask all appearances for the venality and ugliness that lies within.

We could, of course, reduce all this to the trauma of growing up in impoverished post-war Naples; where fascists and Camorrists jostle for supremacy amid their working class environs, and where someone with Lila’s non-conformist streak had to cultivate a steely facade in order to not only survive, but to thrive (in contrast to Elena, who survived by keeping her head down and thrived by moving elsewhere).

We could reduce it even further by resorting to armchair psychoanalysis; by assuming that Lila suffers from some degree of anxiety disorder or other.

But neither of these interpretations feel sufficient. Though the messy accumulation of life’s details — the four volumes can, in effect, be looked at as a single tome representing the kaleidoscope of a full life — as contrasted with the imposing, steely moor of Lila’s existence and perceptions, we see the conflict between Order and Chaos play out in unique force.

When we lie awake at night worried about health, taxes (money in general), our widening ambitions and the thinning out of time, we are all thrust in the same morass that Lila is wading through (apparently, every single day, every single moment).

The world has it that we need to get up, get dressed, go to work, tend to our house and expand as necessary. But more often than not, it feels as though the natural state of ‘the world’ is one that favours chaos, and that if we were to truly ‘relax’, the darkened pit is the only thing that would welcome us.