The Lying Life of Adults

I love books about lying! Like a lot of adolescents, Giovanna starts to recognize the lies her parents and their friends are telling and discovers family secrets. The most interesting lies, though, are the ones people tell themselves in order to rewrite their own histories. I love the way Ferrante sets those shifting stories against a girl’s determination to understand her changing face in the mirror and what is really meant by the idea of beauty.

The book also gave me a chance to return to the setting of Ferrante’s Neopolitan novels, the beauty and violence of which she describes… show more.

You don’t need me to recommend Ferrante, but I will anyway.

A ferocious story about the pain of leaving childhood behind, Ferrante tells the story of Giovanna, a sheltered only child whose life changes when she overhears her father compare her to his sister Vittoria, from whom he is estranged: “She’s getting the face of Vittoria.”

With that, Giovanna is thrown into an existential crisis that leads her to connect with her mysterious aunt, the dark side of Ferrante’s beloved Naples as well as herself. 

Ferrante understands the cruelty of women better than anyone and creates drama with the subtlest… show more.