Book Review: The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante (2020) (Fiction) 4 Stars ****
When we first meet Giovanna, she’s happy, confident, studious, calm, and secure in her family, school, and neighborhood. Most of her self-esteem comes from the admiration she believes is reflected in her father’s eyes until Giovanna overhears a negative remark made to his wife, saying Giovanna looks like his estranged sister—ugly on the outside and the inside. Everything falls apart. “Maybe at that moment something somewhere in my body broke, maybe that’s where I should locate the end of my childhood. I felt as if I were a container of granules that were inperceptibly leaking out of me through a tiny cracks.”
Giovanna goes on a crusade to meet her much-aligned Aunt Vittoria to discover the truth for herself. This is the beginning of Giovanna’s end. Loud, ill-mannered, brash, Vittoria is the antithesis of Giovanna’s educated, well-mannered, soft-spoken parents. What do they have in common? They’re liars. All of them.
Set in Naples, Italy, in the 1990s, the story takes us through Giovanna’s young teenage years from twelve to sixteen, filled with angst, insecurities, manipulations, and lies. It’s almost like reading her diary filled with secrets and contradictions by all the adults around her, as well as by her friends. While Giovanna hates the lies used to cover up, further their ends, protect their reputations, and jockey their postions to come out on top, she is a quick study. As much as Giovanna detests these practices, she recognizes the expediency of such behavior and employs it successfully to insure success in her ever-changing machinations. Gone is the innocent, happy girl we once knew.
In addition to Aunt Vittoria and Giovanna’s parents, her best friends, sisters Angela and Ida and their parents, play integral roles in the drama that is Giovanna’s life. Despite the main character’s young age, this is not a kid’s book. Character development is intense. The adult dramas are played out in full. The teenage characters imitate negative adult behavior. All characters are flawed contradictions of themselves and of the expectations of others. Nothing is as it seems.
Elena Ferrante is a renowned Italian writer, best known for The Neapolitan Novels, a series of four books beginning with My Brilliant Friend which begins the acclaimed HBO ongoing mini-series.
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I wish you all a life inspired by the wonder of the world around us. May you find and live your truth, in harmony with people, nature and the environment. May you be a force for good and a source of love and comfort. May the world be a better place for you having lived and loved here.
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