The Lying Life Of Adults

"Is there any contemporary international novelist better than Elena Ferrante at plumbing the depths of adolescent girls’ souls? I loved Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet and found The Lying Life of Adults a satisfying return to form. Ferrante tells the story of Giovanna, a young teenager who feels “like a cake made with the wrong ingredients.” Disillusioned with her all-too-human parents, Giovanna takes her first steps toward independence and seeks understanding, inspiration and love – from her father’s estranged sister, lonely and profane, living in a rough Naples neighborhood, and later from a friend’s fiancé. The lies that Giovanna tells herself, her parents and her friends are how she creates a private life and her own story – she’s determined to become an adult “as no one ever had before.”"