Elena Ferrante: The Lying Life of Adults (February 2022)

This novel follows the adolescent and early teenage years of Giovanna, a girl born to comfortably – off academic parents in the well-heeled district of Naples. Written in the first person, we witness through her eyes an old family rift, unfaithfulness, her parent’s divorce, her teenage rebellions, involvement with bad boys, her burgeoning sexuality, first love and the beginnings of her intellectual life.

The central mystery is her father’s estrangement from his sister Vittoria who lives in the insalubrious part of Naples, over-crowded and hectic but warmer and livelier than Giovanna’s home. We share her uncertainty about where the truth lies and her struggle with trying to discover the true story behind the strange symbolic bracelet gifted to her, seemingly, at birth by her aunt.

However, our reading group did not enjoy the book. Perhaps it lost something in translation from the Italian. A first person narration can be very effective but on this occasion it could possibly have benefitted from writing the story from the viewpoints of other characters, as in the Moonstone, our November read. We felt uninvolved with the family and found the ending unsatisfactory.

We awarded the book only 1 point out of 4.