The Beach at Night

"ME: You start seeing this in all of Ferrante’s other works. The second book we’ve chosen, The Beach At Night , is a children’s book—or it’s supposed to be a children’s book. SC: It’s really horrifying. ME: Horrifying book. When I interviewed her about it for a piece I was writing, she told me she wrote it for the daughter of a friend of hers who had just had a baby sister and felt displaced in the family. The book is about a doll that gets left on the beach at night by her owner, a little girl who’s gotten a new little kitten and is much more interested in playing with the little kitten now than she is in playing with the doll. Many vicious things happen to the doll on the beach at night. She’s almost burned; part of her body melts off. There’s a man with a thick mustache who puts a golden wire down the doll’s mouth and forces her to speak her name. ME: It’s an illustrated children’s book. My son was obsessed with this book for a while. SC: It’s unrelenting. ME: And it ends with an act of restitution, where the little doll is saved by a kitten that has replaced her and brought back to her owner. SC: That lost doll might as well be the doll that’s lost in The Lost Daughter . Another horrifying doll."