The Lying Life of Adults

One sentence synopsis... An overheard conversation between her parents triggers a chain of events in the angsty adolescence of Ferrante's latest troubled, selfish, insecure female protagonist.

Read it if you like... the Neapolitan novels. This is her first stand alone since the wildly successful series ended and although it doesn't have the same scope it helps fill the empty void.

Dream casting... Gaia Girace is the obvious pick for rebellious teenager Giovanna.

We read this as part of book club, and I'm glad I read it, though I'm not sure I would have picked it up otherwise. This author has been on my radar for a while and the acclaim made me want to read something of hers. This book is well written, but may not have been for me right now with the world feeling so heavy. I had to take my time reading it and can appreciate the author's craft and ability to bring you right into the thoughts of the main character. It's gritty and thought-provoking and uncomfortable and very well done. It also impresses me that a book in translation still reads so well. This may be one of the book club choices I look back on and I'm glad it was chosen because it took me out of my comfort zone.

But I slipped away, and am still slipping away, within these lines that are intended to give me a story, while in fact I am nothing, nothing of my own, nothing that has really begun or really been brought to completion: only a tangled knot, and nobody, not even the one who at this moment is writing, knows if it contains the right thread for a story or is merely a snarled confusion of suffering, without redemption.

Giovanna does feel like a realistic teenage girl, particularly in her righteousness and spitefulness. But I couldn't actually get invested in her story, Ferrante never gave me a hook into what drives her that would give me a real reason to care about her. The Neapolitan setting feels rich, but the language is clunky and the narrative has no drive.