In The Lying Life of Adults, Elena Ferrante takes her devoted readers back to the streets of Naples with a new protagonist, Giovanna, an adolescent who is starting to question herself and her family after a privileged childhood.
The story follows Giovanna from age twelve to sixteen, as she finds an outcast aunt and a whole cast of associated characters from whom she learns about love and beauty. Her quest is for self-acceptance, for a clear view of who she is among her network of family and friends. This need stems from the overwhelming self-doubt planted by her father’s overheard remark to her mother that Giovanna is turning ugly like her aunt.
The novel is narrated by Giovanna in the first person, drawing us right into her world and the emotional confusion of the early years of adolescence. Seen from her perspective, Giovanna’s actions seem a sensible response to her circumstances and her feelings. From the outside, from the point of view of her parents, teachers, and friends, the same actions sometimes seem quite inexplicable.
I enjoyed a return to Naples through this new Ferrante novel. Like many readers, I read with great pleasure Ferrante’s Neopolitan Quartet published in English between 2012 and 2015. The novels, My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay and The Story of the Lost Child, follow the lives from childhood into adulthood of two girls who are quite different from each other yet inter-dependent.
From those books I became familiar with the streets of Naples from the middle-class heights where residents speak standard Italian to its depths in the Industrial Zone where dialect is used. In The Lying Life of Adults, the geography of Naples serves the same symbolic role as in the previous novels, alluding to the lighter and darker aspects of human nature.
You don’t need to have read any of Elena Ferrante’s novels to enjoy this latest one. It stands alone and is one of those books in which you can become totally immersed. If you enjoy it as much as I did, I predict it won’t be long before you read My Brilliant Friend and become hooked on the Neopolitan Quartet.
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| Title: The Lying Life of Adults Author: Elena Ferrante Publisher: Europa Editions Date: 2019 Pages: 322 ISBN: 978-1-78770-240-0 |