Review: The Lying Life of Adults, Elena Ferrante
By Merve Pehlivan
In September 2019, when Europa Editions laconically tweeted “It begins like this.”, revealing the first paragraph of Elena Ferrante’s latest novel to appear in English, it was enough to tantalize millions of avid readers. The Lying Life of Adults, published a year after the teaser, will not disappoint them.
All of Ferrante’s novels have the immediacy of first person-narration by Italian female protagonists, most of them Neapolitans. The Lying Life of Adults is no exception. Patterns and themes familiar to loyal readers emerge early on in the book: A young woman deeply insecure with her own body image identifies, with equal dread and fascination, with a woman of her kin. Another young woman feeling trapped in the knots of family and poverty, admires and feels inadequate next to a man who’s made it out of Naples and moved to the north of Italy. Like the Neapolitan quartet, the plot of The Lying Life of Adults is largely driven by class tensions and resentment ripping families apart, throwing lives in disarray.
The story of Giovanna’s coming of age begins with an assumption not untypical among adolescents: When she overhears her father saying that her face is turning into that of Vittoria, her paternal aunt, she equates the resemblance with ugliness. While Giovanna and her parents live in Vomero, an upper-class neighborhood atop a hill in Naples, Vittoria lives on the industrial fringes of the city left in neglect and poverty. Andrea and Nella, educated and sanctimonious adults who have long blotted Vittoria out of their lives, even from photographs, find themselves yielding to their daughter’s one strong wish: Meeting her aunt to find out what she looks like.
From Giovanna’s first contact with Vittoria, who she was taught to believe was an evil person that will stop at nothing to hurt her brother, the title of the book slowly reveals itself. Giovanna begins to regularly descend from Vomero to Pascone, fostering a tumultuous relationship with her quarrelsome and domineering aunt whose affections shine through the cracks of her anger. The conflicting narratives from two sides of the family chip away Giovanna’s hitherto loyal defense and faith in her parents. The naiveté of a child’s confusion and lack of comprehension slowly matures into suspicion and then into awareness. She grows a keener eye to observe each of her family members, cementing her own judgments. She also adopts a habit of lying to her parents at just about the same time she discovers their lies. Unlike her parents, she hates to put up a façade of moral rectitude and narrates in retrospect: “I could no longer be innocent, behind my thoughts there were other thoughts, childhood was over.”
Giovanna navigates adolescence like any other teenager- quick to adore a mysterious adult, quick to resent her parents and rebel, soaking up the negative adjectives (ugly, grim) people describe her with, seeking validation from peers and grown-ups alike. In addition to Ida and Angela, her only friends from childhood, she meets other teenagers through Vittoria and falls in love with the fiancé of one of them. She doesn’t yet reveal to herself how far she will pursue her friendship with Roberto, but she fixes the beginning of adulthood with restless clarity: Getting rid of her virginity.
Throughout the novel, an ornate bracelet moves from wrist to wrist, looping and twisting the lives of adulterous men and their lovers, mothers and daughters. It becomes both a plot driver and an ominous charm, the story of how it changed hands deepening with further deceptions. When Giovanna decides to go back to Milan to retrieve the bracelet from Roberto’s apartment, she has to make a choice between betrayal or resisting temptation, just like many others who reached for the bracelet before her.
In Ferrante’s novels, rhetorical questions never finish with question marks because the protagonists’ doubts are real and sharply-defined. In The Lying Life of Adults, Giovanna’s suspicions and misgivings help her carve a sense of selfhood out of seeing her parents for who they are, aided by the bracelet, and trying to break free from the clutch of her aunt. Ferrante’s books are sometimes referred to as page-turners but one must try slowing down to delay the pleasure. The author’s mastery lies in suspenseful storytelling with acutely built layers of character and nuances which can be sacrificed to a fast-paced reading. She teases the reader just enough to whet their appetite, laying out the possibilities extensively, making them race to the conclusion. In her latest novel, she elaborately plays with the idea of seduction but decides against the easy way out and adds another block to the edifice of the story. Giovanna needs to learn about herself and the people around her a little bit better, grow a little bit more.
Following Ferrante’s words are like following the edge of a knife, the shine and the sharpness keep you alert throughout. Her fiction is made without artifice, her uniqueness in contemporary literature is due in part to the honesty of her writing. If an adolescent’s sexual awakening is more crude than awkward, there is no hiding in the story. It’s all there with pungent sensory description. The Lying Life of Adults gives everything a devout Ferrante follower anticipates and promises an engrossing read for the uninitiated.
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Merve Pehlivan is a translator and interpreter based in Istanbul.