It's amazing to be alive at the same time as Elena Ferrante. It's a simple novel, beautifully written. I would read anything Elena Ferrante writes, forever.

Anything Elena Ferrante publishes is a must read for me and The Lying Life of Adults did not disappoint.

YOU MAGAZINE, SOUTH AFRICA, 8 APRIL


THE LYING LIFE OF ADULTS
BY ELENA FERRANTE
EUROPA
Nobody does messy, raw human
emotion quite like Elena Ferrante.
In this standalone novel – her first
since the Neapolitan quartet –
the Italian author follows a girl’s
turbulent journey into adulthood.
Born to educated, middle-class
parents in “the right part” of Naples,
Giovanna adores her father –
until one day she overhears him
complaining about her. In a conversation
with her mother, he remarks
that Giovanna is starting to
resemble Vittoria, his estranged
sister whom he loathes and has
always described as the epitome
of ugliness and spite.
Giovanna becomes obsessed
with finding her aunt, who lives in
the seedy, working-class side of
the city, so she can see for herself
how closely she resembles her.
After they meet, it soon becomes
clear that there are many things
that her parents have lied to her
about and it turns out Vittoria
herself is also maddeningly unreliable.
Giovanna has to choose
which elements from these conflicting
worlds to embrace.
Ferrante’s writing is deceptively
simple yet there is so much
emotion coded into it, like bombs
quietly ticking away in the background.
Fans will be utterly enthralled.
– JANE VORSTER

This book may be a welcome return to 20th-Century Naples for some Ferrante fans, but for me it was an unpleasant return. One can see how Lenu and Lila's Naples influences the childhood and adolescence of Giovanna, though there is no indication they are from the same literary universe. Longing, betrayal, violence and family secrets surround Giovanna, her parents, her aunts, friends and acquaintances, as Giovanna comes of age and discovers her own sexuality and personal identity.

Elena Ferrante is easily one of my favorite authors. I was immediately hooked from the first few pages. When an author can draw me in from the first few pages, I am very impressed. That is not an easy feat. Ferrante has always been able to do this. With every one of her books.

She is also an excellent author. Her ease with words is unmatched.

I highly recommend this novel!

It's Elena Ferrante, so you already know it's gonna be good. After finishing the Neapolitan Novels, I'll probably read everything else Ferrante publishes. The Lying Life of Adults did not disappoint.

The way Ferrante writes about family dynamics, relationships between children and parents, children and other children, friendship between women, sexual coming of age... it's just THE BEST. Is there anyone writing today that does bildungsroman better than Ferrante? I don't understand how someone captures the adolescent psyche so well. She has a way of remembering, embodying, and writing about the parts we forget or hope to forget about ourselves as we grow. When I read her books it's as if I'm walking through memories from my childhood that I didn't know I still remembered, and I love that. Her characters are rich and layered and complex no matter their age.

Ferrante is a total master, there's not much else to say. Read her. If not this book, then the Neapolitan Novels. It makes me sick how great she is. If you love deep, rich character development, or coming of age stories about troubled families, and you HAVEN'T read Ferrante, I pity you. Get on that!

Thanks to #NetGalley and Europa Editions for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book is written with an immediacy that makes it difficult to put down, while the family relationships explored through the eyes of its young protagonist add a richness to the story as we learn the motivations and complexities of the characters Ferrante paints with delicate brushstrokes. A book for every woman who was ever a teenager - all of us!

It is not only the adults who lie in Elena Ferrante's newest novel, but protagonist teen-aged Giovanna, who is rebelliously acting out against convention and class. Familiarily set in Naples, it explores the coming of age of this troubled girl, her exploration of sexuality and the variable nature of friendships. Secrets abound with the discovery that her parents have concealed family members from her and that their marriage is far from idyllic. Giovanna's actions, decisions and self-awareness seemed primarily a reaction to the way she was influenced by the men in her life. This was difficult to read and requires the reader to accept that Giovanna is growing up in a different time and society.

Another success for Ferrante in her telling of adolescence coming of age. While not as strong as the “Quartet” ferrante exquisitely captures the struggles of becoming yourself in adolescence...the need to question everything you’ve been told about yourself and the world around you. This book about exploring the world around captures those struggles. She does this in a way that contrasts what is real with what is perceived.

I enjoyed Ferrante’s Neapolitan series, and I was determined to enjoy The Lying Life of Adults. I tried reading it and Giovanna’s self-absorption and her hatred of her parents and what they supposedly did to her was too much. I started with reading and then went to the audiobook, thinking maybe if I heard the words spoken, it might make a difference. The only difference was that Giovanna and her Aunt Vittoria became more toxic. I know that there would be some rough language about sex. I expected that, but I really had hoped there would be some grown in Giovanna as the story followed her from age twelve to sixteen. The only grown seemed to be in her breasts. At the end there seems to be the possibility of more books to come and maybe Giovanna will eventually move out of her self-absorption, but I found no pleasure in this book.

I read this book rapidly over 2 days and like the Neapolitan series, I was completely engrossed in the story of Giovanna. Fans of Ferrante will not be disappointed. Her writing leaves me feeling a little like an outsider looking in as I am unfamiliar with Italy and Naples, and the way of life and love of the characters in the story. Passion, emotion, and entitlement of the intriguing characters kept me reading until the end. It left me wanting more and wanting to read more of Ferrante’s writing and hopeful for more of Giovanna’s story.

I'm used to some of the harsh, blunt prose from Elena Ferrante (and, by proxy, translator Ann Goldstein) from the Neapolitan Novels, but Giovanna's self-hatred in this book forces the reader to stew in this toxicity. While effective in its confrontational techniques, Giovanna's thoughts and feelings serve less to advance the plot or the understanding of the novel than allow the reader to become bogged down by them. This is mirrored by Giovanna's friends and family, especially her acerbic estranged aunt, Vittoria, who is difficult to pin down. In this way, the novel definitely delivers on the "lying adults" part of the title

This galley is just a sampling but its enough to raise the anticipation. Already placed my preorder to finish reading this in hard cover

For anyone who has read Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, The Lying Life of Adults will be a return to familiar territory – the Naples setting, the examination of class and culture, the fascinating conversations and thoughts that explore feminine interiority – and for anyone who was beguiled by those earlier works, as I certainly was, this is a return to that pure literary magic. I have a hard time articulating what it is that Ferrante gets so right but you can just feel that she breathes life into her pages; there's a thrumming heartbeat with which my own pulse echoes; I recognise and believe every word she writes. Magic.

As the book opens, Giovanna is thirteen years old – living in the middle class upper city of Naples in the 1990s, the only child of two loving, sophisticated, and educated parents – and when we first meet her, she's certainly still a child (sitting on her parents' laps, playful and obedient as a puppy), but as the story progresses, we watch as Giovanna grows from full child (believing her parents to be perfect and wanting to live under their protection), to starting to rebel (still a child but pushing back against her parents while hoping that they'll maintain their illusion of perfection), to becoming a full adult at sixteen (mature in mind and body and no longer in need of her parents' protective narrative; ready to start writing her own).

There may not be anything particularly groundbreaking about a coming-of-age novel in itself, but the grit and candour of Giovanna's experience, while not my own exact experience, felt entirely truthful and relatable. And as with her earlier novels, I was totally intrigued with Ferrante's exploration of Naples – the high and the low – and with a sidetrip to the university in Milan, we once again are privy to some interesting intellectual discussions that further explore the culture's prevailing ethos. Once again, magic – if this turns into another quartet of books, I'd be well pleased.