REVIEW: The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

After a three month delay, the new Elena Ferrante novel has finally arrived on Australian shores and into the hands of eager readers everywhere. First published in Italian in November last year, the wait for the English translation of The Lying Life of Adults (done by longtime Ferrante collaborator, Ann Goldstein) has been agonising for non-Italian speakers. So to say that this is one of the year’s biggest literary events is something of an understatement. Ferrante’s novels command the kind of adoration that is hard to replicate, and which is all the more precious for it. But does The Lying Life of Adults live up to the hype? Of course it does – how could it not?

With Naples as its backdrop, The Lying Life of Adults is a coming-of-age tale with a bitter twist, written with startling intensity and clarity. Its protagonist is a young woman named Giovanna who finds herself increasingly caught between the alienated worlds of the adults in her life – worlds that are built upon pride and misunderstanding, but also love and intellectual and spiritual fulfilment. The novel begins with a rather blunt statement: “Two year before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly.” We’ve had a little over a year to painstakingly analyse these sentences, which were so teasingly plastered over social media with the book’s initial announcement. Out of context they seem harsh and cruel, but it’s a cruelty that doesn’t exist within the book – not intentionally, at least.

Giovanna’s father, exasperated with her moods and her failing aptitude at school, is comparing her to his spiteful sister Vittoria, a woman he claims has cast him out of his family and who has become something of a childhood bogeyman to the girl. He does not mean it seriously, but Giovanna is incapable of understanding the nuance of his words and they wound her deeply. They come to define much of her young adult life as she struggles to carve out an identity for herself, driving her into the poorer parts of Naples to seek Vittoria out and come to a reckoning with what Giovanna believes to be her possible future. Her union with Vittoria, along with their resulting relationship, will come to have long lasting and irreversible effects.

As with her Neapolitan Quartet, Ferrante displays a remarkable adeptness at inhabiting the mind of her central character. A young woman of intense feeling who is made to deal with things far beyond a child’s comprehension, Giovanna makes for a captivating protagonist. The emotional vulnerability of adolescence manifests itself in Giovanna’s naivety and recklessness, as she feels herself unable to halt the tide of ugliness that she believes will come to characterise her both physically and emotionally. Giovanna will command sympathy and frustration alike from readers, but I was compelled by her from the start. Ferrante understands the power of youth as a narrative device through which to illuminate all of the hypocrisies, inconsistencies and pettiness of adulthood, but also to show how we can make the act of living one of persistence, finding small moments of joy and comfort where we can. It’s this understanding that makes The Lying Life of Adults such a powerful novel, one that will delight Ferrante’s existing fans but also one that will introduce her brilliance to many more readers.

Showcasing humankind’s capacity for both beauty and malice with its unforgettable cast of characters, The Lying Life of Adults is everything an Elena Ferrante fan could want in a novel – and so much more.

—The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante & translated by Ann Goldstein (Allen & Unwin) is out now.

The Lying Life of Adults

by Elena Ferrante & Ann Goldstein (Translator)

Giovanna's pretty face has changed: it's turning into the face of an ugly, spiteful adolescent. But is she seeing things as they really are? Into which mirror must she look to find herself and save herself?

She is searching for a new face in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: the Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and the Naples of the depths, which professes to be a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves between these two cities, disoriented by the fact that...

Order NowRead More

2 Comments Share:

About the Contributor

Olivia Fricot

Olivia Fricot (she/her) is Booktopia's Senior Content Producer and editor of the Booktopian blog. She has too many plants and not enough bookshelves, and you can usually find her reading, baking, or talking to said plants. She is pro-Oxford comma.

Follow Olivia: Twitter