The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

 

I am unabashed in my adoration of the Neapolitan quartet by Ferrante. They are some of the most powerful books I've ever read about female friendship, adolescence, and the complications of all sorts of relationships. Naples played a powerful role in those novels and I devoured those four books and have since recommended them to many women I know, as well as given them as a holiday gift.  

I'm out of touch with book news, so I didn't even realize that Ferrante had a new book out and when we decided to read it as our December book club book, I was utterly delighted. New Ferrante!  A complete, standalone story! Yes, please! I immediately ordered The Lying Life of Adults from the library and kept my fingers crossed that it would become as beloved to me as her previous novels.

It was a bit of a disappointment, to be perfectly honest. I mean, it was about a young girl growing up in Naples in as part of a dysfunctional family and included lots of deeply drawn characters and emotional conundrums, but it was also just a series of toxic encounters with people, one after another. Our main character is a teenager and of course she doesn't realize that everyone around her is horrible, but it also seems like the adults don't know that all the other adults are horrible, too. Ugh. It was not quite as bad as Winter's Bone (my two word review of that novel: pretentious bullshit), but there was nothing redeeming about anyone in this book. I guess that maybe a cynical take on the real world, but have my endless reviews of romance novels not taught you, dear reader, that I am looking for anything but cynicism in the world right now?

If you like character studies of truly terrible people and a confused adolescent winding her way through the politics of those characters, this might be for you. If you a Ferrante completionist, don't let me stop you from reading this. But I think most people would be well suited to steer away from this one.

Notable lines:

1) "Reading isn't enough," he said. "Texts like these have to be studied."

His eyes li up as he uttered that statement. His true existential condition was revealed as soon as he was dealing with books, ideas, lofty questions. (page 195)

This is our main character's unflattering description of her father and it made me love her father because that is my husband.

2) She did so in a devout voice, she called him professor, she was so enthralled that I was ashamed to have been born female, to be destined to be treated like that by a man even if I was well educated, even if I occupied an important position. (page 210)

Being a woman in the world sucks and it's hard to watch a teenage girl learn this in real time.

3) "I don't think Roberto is that type of man."
"They're all that type of man." (page 269)

My mother's mantra when I was growing up was "all men suck." I grew up sort of afraid of men and knowing that I was in an inferior position to them. While I don't think all men suck today, especially since I'm married to a wonderful guy, I do think most men do suck. Again, it was hard to read this book because of passages like this, passages that are sharp and insightful, but painful to read.