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Summary
Summary
A NEW YORK TIMES & NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A BEST BOOK OF 2020
The Washington Post・O, The Oprah Magazine・TIME Magazine・NPR・People Magazine・The New York Times Critics・The Guardian・Electric Literature・Financial Times・Times UK・Irish Times・New York Post・Kirkus Reviews・Toronto Star・The Globe and Mail・Harper's Bazaar・Vogue UK・The Arts Desk
A POWERFUL NEW NOVEL set in a divided Naples by ELENA FERRANTE, the New York Times best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lost Daughter. Soon to be a NETFLIX Original Series.
"Another spellbinding coming-of-age tale from a master."--People Magazine, Top 10 Books of 2020
Giovanna's pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father clearly despise? Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is.
Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves from one to the other in search of the truth, but neither city seems to offer answers or escape.
Named one of 2016's most influential people by TIME Magazine and frequently touted as a future Nobel Prize-winner, Elena Ferrante has become one of the world's most read and beloved writers. With this new novel about the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, Ferrante proves once again that she deserves her many accolades. In The Lying Life of Adults, readers will discover another gripping, highly addictive, and totally unforgettable Neapolitan story.
"There's no doubt [the publication of The Lying Life of Adults] will be the literary event of the year."--ELLE Magazine
Author Notes
Elena Ferrante was born in Naples, Italy. Her work includes Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, The Story of the Lost Child, The Story of a New Name, The Lost Daughter, Fragments, and My Brilliant Friend. She is the author of My Brilliant Friend which made The New York Times Bestsellers List and The New Zealand Best Seller List 2015. She was included on Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A single comment can change a life, or for Giovanna, the adolescent only child of a middle-class Neapolitan couple in the early 1990s and narrator of Ferrante's sumptuous latest (after The Story of the Lost Child), it can set it in motion. "She's getting the face of Vittoria," Giovanna's father, Andrea, says about her, referring to Giovanna's estranged aunt Vittoria, whom Andrea disdains and calls ugly. The comment provokes Giovanna into seeking out Vittoria on the other side of Naples, where she finds a beautiful, fiery woman, consumed by bitterness over a lover's death and resentful of Andrea's arrogance at having climbed the social ladder. Andrea can't save Giovanna from Vittoria's influence, and their relationship will affect those closest to Giovanna as family secrets unravel and disrupt the harmony of her quiet life. Giovanna's parents' devastating marital collapse, meanwhile, causes her to be distracted at school and held back a year, and prompts Giovanna into a steely self-awareness as she has her first sexual experiences along a bumpy ride toward adulthood. Themes of class disparity and women's coming-of-age are at play much as they were in Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet, but the depictions of inequality serve primarily as a backdrop to Giovanna's coming-of-age trials that buttress the gripping, plot-heavy tale. While this feels minor in comparison to Ferrante's previous work, Giovanna is the kind of winning character readers wouldn't mind seeing more of. (Sept.)
Library Journal Review
In her first solo audiobook narration, Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei delivers Ferrante's ("The Neapolitan Novels") coming-of-age story with warmth and empathy--qualities desperately sought by intellectually curious 12-year-old Giovanna, whose viewpoint Ferrante crafts as both unsparingly observant and winning. Formerly a model daughter but now in the throes of puberty and too distracted to study, Giovanna earns such disappointing grades that her despairing father mutters: "She is getting the face of Vittoria." Overhearing this invocation of Aunt Vittoria--reviled, seen in family photos as inked-out black rectangles--Giovanna perceives both her fall from grace and the loss of faith in her parents' credibility. Given that they no longer take her seriously, who can reliably offer "a gaze to evaluate me"? Beginning with visits to Vittoria and her curiously extended family, Giovanna ventures into the Naples beyond the scope of her cultured, erudite parents, collecting acquaintances, experiences, and backstories about her father and a disputed family heirloom. With privileged, articulate Giovanna; brash, unfiltered housemaid Vittoria; and an array of acquaintances, Tomei voices characters from different social strata and linguistic styles vividly yet compassionately. VERDICT Ferrante's latest sojourn in Naples is a treat for her fans, literary fiction readers, and public library fiction collections.--Linda Sappenfield, Round Rock P.L., TX