Netflix to adapt Elena Ferrante's The Lying Life of Adults
The streaming giant’s announcement precedes the English-language publication of the acclaimed author’s latest work
Netflix is to adapt the Elena Ferrante novel The Lying Life of Adults as a TV series in collaboration with Italian production house Fandango.
The streaming giant has picked up the rights to the book, which was published in Italy last November. The English translation was due for global release in June, but will now be released in September due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It follows the adaptation of the author’s four Neapolitan novels which were turned into the series My Brilliant Friend.
Set in the 1990s, The Lying Life of Adults tells the story of a young girl from an affluent background whose search for her aunt leads her to the industrial, working class side of Naples familiar to Ferrante readers.
Although details on the release date and cast are yet to be released, Netflix has released a short trailer featuring text from the opening of the novel.
In a statement, Felipe Tewes, Director of Local Language Original Series at Netflix, said: “We are incredibly honoured to be entrusted to develop a series based on The Lying Life of Adults. Elena Ferrante books have inspired and captivated audiences in Italy and around the world, and we are thrilled to bring her latest endeavour to the screens of our global audience. We are also excited to continue our partnership with Fandango, and invest in more unique Made In Italy stories that we believe will resonate in Italy and around the world”.
Fandango were previously involved with the production of My Brilliant Friend, a co-production between HBO, the Italian national broadcaster RAI and Italian VOD platform TIMvision which has been broadcast on Sky Atlantic in the UK and was recently renewed for a third series.
Ferrante has famously maintained her anonymity since the publication of her first novel in 1992. In 2016, an investigative journalist, Claudio Gatti, claimed that Rome-based translator Anita Raja was Ferrante, in a controversial “unmasking”. In 2017, a study at the University of Padua concluded that Domenico Starnone, Raja’s husband, was the actual author. Both Starnone and Raja have denied writing the works, which have sold over 15 million copies and been translated into numerous languages.
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The Lying Life of Adults
by Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein (Translator)
3.66 · Rating details · 51,016 ratings · 5,271 reviews
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. (less)
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Hardcover, 336 pages
Published September 1st 2020 by Europa Editions (first published November 7th 2019)
Original TitleThe Lying Life of Adults
ISBN1609455916 (ISBN13: 9781609455910)
Edition LanguageEnglishSettingNaples (Italy)
Literary AwardsKirkus Prize Nominee for Fiction (2020)
Other Editions (36)
The Lying Life of Adults
La vita bugiarda degli adulti
A Vida Mentirosa dos Adultos
La vida mentirosa de los adultos
حياة البالغين الكاذبة
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cosa rappresenta il braccialetto?
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Gina Di Secondo me il braccialetto è la metafora della vita bugiarda degli adulti. Il gioiello- ammirato, desiderato e contestato fra i personaggi del raccont…more
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Bill Harris My own first frame of reference for judging novels is to ask, 'What's it like to be such and such'? Ferrante is always great because she informs us of…more
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Angela M
Sep 21, 2020Angela M rated it it was ok
Shelves: edelweiss-reviews
“Maybe everything would be less complicated if you told the truth.”
I’ll try to make my review less complicated with my honest thoughts. I’ve come across my fair share of dysfunctional families in many of the novels I’ve read, but this one - well dysfunctional is putting it mildly. I didn’t understand this family, their relationships with one another and with other characters. I definitely had a hard time getting into the melodramatic world of teenage Giovanna, even though she gets it right with the above quote. There were times when I felt sorry for her, but for most of the novel, she just got on my nerves. I just was not pulled into the lives of these characters at all. I found them all ridiculous. I tried, but I struggled. This was a monthly buddy read with Diane and Esil and if I had been reading it on my own, I would have abandoned it. I very much enjoyed My Brilliant Friend and still plan to read the other books in that series, since I own all of them, but this one just didn’t work for me . I’d be lying if I said it did.
I received a copy of this book from Europa Editions through Edelweiss. (less)
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Adam Dalva
Aug 17, 2020Adam Dalva rated it it was amazing
Full Review: If The Lying Life of Adults, the marvelous new novel by the pseudonymous Elena Ferrante, doesn’t reach the soaring heights of her masterpiece, The Story of a New Name, that is mainly an issue of the Ferrantean accumulation—deep networks of supporting characters, all with rich inner lives—being limited by the confines of a mere 320 pages. With Ferrante, as with Tolstoy, there is always the implication of a few dozen extra chapters, known only to her...
Continue Reading on Guernica Mag: https://www.guernicamag.com/objects-o... (less)
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Violet wells
Nov 22, 2020Violet wells rated it it was amazing
This novel has such an ingenious yet simple premise and it's a lot more topical than most reviewers have given it credit for. You sense Ferrante never dates the novel's events for this reason. Essentially, it dramatizes through a single family the conflict between the liberal well-educated elite and the poorly educated outcasts of social change. And fake news, of the family mythology variety, plays a big part.
The narrator, an adolescent girl, Giovanna, is the daughter of two intellectuals. On the surface her life is idyllic. It's a household which ostensibly prides itself on a democratic open exchange of views and the primary importance of culture and education and free speech. Both parents wear a facemask of liberal tolerance and candid sincerity. The novel begins at a crossroads moment in the daughter's life. The opening sentence is, "Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly." We soon learn she's not reporting accurately what he said. In fact, he compared her to his sister Vittoria who, because of her father's deeply ingrained loathing for his sister, is the personification of ugliness for Giovanna. She has never met any of her paternal relations. Her father has disowned them and marginalised them into insignificance. He maintains his sister was a degenerate and he was forced to break off relations with her because of an affair she had with a shifty married man, a moral stance which led to him breaking off relations with his entire family. What we understand is that her father has moved up a social class in a short time and has disowned his blood.
Our narrator naturally becomes more and more curious about her father's family and especially Vittoria. Vittoria works as a cleaner and lives in a desolate run-down neighbourhood of Naples. When she eventually meets her, Vittoria takes her to the grave of her former lover and tells the story of her great love which her brother vindictively ruined by telling the man's wife about it. Vittoria's claims of candour are expressed in crude volcanic language and often take a sexually explicit form. As if the truth, something ostensibly sparkling and crystalline in her parents' world, is something more coarse and ugly, of the blood, for Vittoria. She tells a version of the family history which makes of Giovanni's father a snaky liar. She then asks her about a bracelet she gave to her brother to give her. Giovanna has never received any bracelet. This bracelet will become a kind of oracle, telling truths at key moments of Giovanni's journey of discovery none of the adults will admit until coerced.
Our narrator recognises aspects of herself in Vittoria and suddenly finds herself belonging exclusively to neither part of her family. The adults with their webs of lies have created a kind of court case and turned her into the jury. Truth in this novel is often little more than applied cosmetics.
I've seen many have found this novel overly laden with drama but you might say Neapolitans live closer to their hearts than most of us and don't as a rule garage their feelings. I think anyone who has experienced any kind of family feud - all of us? - will recognise the murky opportunistic nature of truth telling in such conflicts. That said, I agree there a few times when Ferrante can be a little heavy handed with the drama when a more subtle touch would be better. However I woke up eagerly looking forward to reading more of this novel every single day and, essentially, that's what one asks of a book.
(less)
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Paul Fulcher
Sep 03, 2020Paul Fulcher rated it really liked it
Shelves: 2020
It’s good that you’re spending time with people who are better than you, it’s the only way to go up not down.
The identity of the “neighbourhood” in Elena Ferrante’s epic Neopolitan Quartet was not explicitly mentioned in the novels but those who knew the city soon recognised the setting as the Rione Luzzatti district, even pinpointing the tunnel that plays a key role in the first part as Lila and Lenù attempt to escape the neighbourhood to the sea to one on the Via Emanuele Gianturco:
description
Ferrante’s latest novel, beautifully translated by Ann Goldstein, is much more explicit as to location, creating a memorable evocation of early 1990s Naples, and enabling the google maps user (in these Covid-19 non-travel days) to literally follow in the characters’ footsteps. The novel begins:
Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly. The sentence was uttered under his breath, in the apartment that my parents, newly married, had bought at the top of Via San Giacomo dei Capri, in Rione Alto.
Everything—the spaces of Naples, the blue light of a frigid February, those words—remained fixed. 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.
The narrow street Via San Giacomo dei Capri rising to the Rione Alto area is our teenage narrator (the novel covers around four year from her aged 12 to just after her 16th birthday) Giovanna’s father’s equivalent of Lila and Lenù’s tunnel.
description
Moving there, to the top of that hill, marls his escape from the Pascone district, and the Industrial Zone, where he was brought up (the depths of the depths of Naples), and where his family, particularly his sister still live, a place and a family he now repudiates. Indeed the opening words of the novel are actually Giovanna’s interpretation of her father comparing her bitterly to his sister, in an angry conversation with her mother, not meant to be overheard:
All I could hear from my room was that she was giving him a summary of the teachers’ complaints, and I understood that she was bringing up as an excuse the changes of early adolescence. But he interrupted her, and in one of the tones that he never used with me—even giving in to dialect, which was completely banned in our house—let slip what he surely wouldn’t have wanted to come out of his mouth:
“Adolescence has nothing to do with it: she’s getting the face of Vittoria.”
I’m sure that if he’d known I could hear him he would never have used a tone so far removed from our usual playful ease. They both thought the door of my room was closed, I always closed it, and they didn’t realize that one of them had left it open. So it was that, at the age of twelve, I learned from my father’s voice, muffled by the effort to keep it low, that I was becoming like his sister, a woman in whom—I had heard him say as long as I could remember—ugliness and spite were combined to perfection.
But this only prompts in Giovanna a desire to meet her aunt, to see if there is a resemblance, and using a street atlas, she works out the path that she could take to get there, something I’ve attempted to recreate using Google maps.
description
(see https://i.ibb.co/WBcBJ5C/map3.jpg for a larger copy)
Giovanni inevitably finds herself drawn to her aunt and her district, particularly when, as the opening lines of the novel and it's title rather hint, her parents' marriage proves to be built on a lie. Although the tension between raising herself (literally in the city, and figuratively) and lowering herself remains key to the story.
Another wonderful novel from one of our finest writers. Intriguingly it ends on a note that would seem to leave space for a sequel(s), although this may be wishful thinking as the quartet was planned, and indeed written, as such all along, a single novel published in four parts. But I look forward to what Ferrante brings us next.
4.5 stars (less)
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Diane S ☔
Sep 20, 2020Diane S ☔ added it
I finished this book, skimmed the last part but did not dnf it because it was Esils , Angela's and my buddy read. I am, however, going to leave it unrated because I disliked this book immensely. These people are seriously strange, not a likable character among them. It is overdramatic, full of introspective teenage angst, and people who acted in ways I didn't understand. This is when you can say, come on Diane, tell us how you really feel. Sometimes books just rub us the wrong way. This one did. (less)
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Ines
Nov 09, 2019Ines rated it liked it
RECENSIONE ITALIANA IN FONDO😉
I have just closed the book and I feel inside a whirlwind of feelings and emotions...... unfortunately not all positive, in fact, what predominates most here, is this sense of toxicity. The relationships we will find here narrated, are blindfolded by this sense of suffocation and poison. Giovanna is growing up in this ambiguous, disguised and intoxicated family of fiction, untruth and tenderness... but where can she find herself if all that her heart seeks is only satisfaction of the instinctive need and disguise of sin?
The desire to know Victoria, the aunt so much hated by her parents, will only plunge her into a sick reality, of events steeped in relational bipolarity.
All the characters we will know and will have for Giannina( Giovanna), roles always different and conditioned by the events of the moment, live also themselves nailed by a fragmented reality of events, stratified of circumstances used as in a "theater of fiction".
Margherita, Angela, Ida, Mariano,Costanza,Giuliana,Corrado,Tonino..... they will move around the life of Giannina nailed by an ever-ending look at themself, at the meager gain that is of affection, morals or relationship of the moment, of the circumstance...
This is the feeling of toxicity that I experienced during the reading, where the hope of a healthy look of good, of respectful tenderness cannot exist for this humanity that we will know.
I thought that the word" lie" was the center of all this story, rather than lie or mask.... what came to my mind and corresponded better was the word" sin" or" iniquity". A river of pain and relationships vitiated by conjectures of thought always based on the instant satisfaction of the moment, the discomfort of not controlling the others, the condition not gone as expected.
A vastness of concealment of the "ME" and sin, extra-marital relationships, of bad friendships and relationships, of control over the destiny of those around us. Wow, How this poor Giovanna could ever grow up, esteem and look loving her parents as she looked at them as she was a child?
In all this narration one thing is always missing , the absence of Forgiveness and Mercy; also the encounter with Roberto, perhaps the only solar and positive character in the narration, which introduces Giannina to an opaque concept of God, He too, is swallowed up by this living satisfying impulses and circumstances of the moment.
God, who appears, yes, for a moment, but soon forgotten within the gospel books of Andrea, father of Giannina, who will give them to his daughter.
Perhaps in the end it will come to a grain of good embrace between Victoria ( the evil aunt) and her brother Andrea (Giannina's father), but always conditioned by a convenience for a better job for her sister.
Giannina will live this continuum of emotions and pain day after day, in continuous mutation almost from an hour to the next one.
But, is it always sin and lies that determine my life? Is it evil sin that has the last word on my destiny? In the last page Giovanna will leave for Venice, and so the novel is closed... and I found myself saying, "What is your truth Giovanna?.. I really hope you know what you’re running from, and what you’re looking for..."
POST SCRIPTUM: in these hours, from the moment i put this review on GR, i received many messages asking me if this book will worth the reading or is kind depressing as the other two books of her i cited down in the under messages. Well... yes, a book always deserves to be read, you must create your own opinion about, this is mine and it could be completely opposite or wrong for your point of view😉.
About the future english translation: I have no idea about the translation that Madame Goldstein will donate to you, so curious about it!! there are many mixed italian/dialect concepts, words, phrases so difficult for us italian to uderstand perfectly in on sight that i have no clue how she will translate and let you understand fully the meaning!! I am sure she will create a perfect english version as she has been able to do for all the Neapolitan novels!
Henri Matisse, Portrait of Yvonne Landsberg
Ho appena chiuso il libro e mi sento dentro a un turbinio di sensazioni ed emozioni...... purtroppo non tutte positive, anzi, quello che predomina di piu' è questo senso di tossicità. Le relazioni che troveremo qui narrate sono bendate da questo senso di soffocamento e veleno. Giovanna e il suo crescere in questa famiglia ambigua, mascherata e intossicata di finzione, la troveremo alle prese con il desiderio struggente di amore, verità e tenerezza...... ma dove mai potrà trovarlo se tutto quello che cerca il suo cuore è solo appagamento del bisogno istintivo e camuffamento del peccato?
Il desiderio di conoscere Vittoria, la zia tanto odiata dai suoi genitori, non farà altro che farla piombare in una realtà malata, di eventi intrisi di bipolarità relazionale.
Tutti i personaggi che conosceremo e avranno per Giannina( Giovanna) ruoli sempre diversi e condizionati dagli eventi del momento, vivono anche loro inchiodati da una realtà frammentata di eventi, stratificata di circostanze utilizzate come in un teatro della finzione.
Margherita, Angela, Ida, Mariano,Costanza,Giuliana,Corrado,Tonino..... si muoveranno intorno alla vita di Giovanna inchiodati da uno sguardo sempre fine a se stesso, al guadagno misero che sia di affetto, morale o relazione del momento, della circostanza...
E' questa la sensazione di tossicità che ho vissuto durante la lettura, dove la speranza di uno sguardo sano di bene, di tenerezza rispettosa non può esistere per questa umanità che conosceremo.
Riflettevo che la parola bugia fosse il centro di tutto questo racconto, più che bugia o maschera.....ciò che mi veniva in mente e mi corrispondeva meglio era la parola peccato e iniquità. Un fiume di dolore e relazioni viziate da congetture di pensiero sempre basate sulla soddisfazione istantanea del momento, del fastidio del non controllo sull'altro, della condizione non andata come si aspettava.
Una vastità di nascondimento dell' IO e peccato, relazioni extra matrimoniali, di amicizie e relazioni malate, di controllo sul destino di chi ci sta accanto. Caspita, ma sta povera Giovanna come avrebbe mai potuto crescere,stimare e guardare amando i propri genitori come li guardava da bambina?
In tutto questo narrare manca sempre una cosa , l'assenza di Perdono e di Misericordia; anche l'incontro con Roberto, forse unico personaggio solare e pieno di positività nel vivere, che introduce Giannina ad un opaco concetto di Dio, viene fagocitato anche lui da questo vivere soddisfando impulsi e circostanze del momento.
Dio, che appare sì, per un momento, ma ben presto dimenticato dentro ai vangeli di Andrea, papà di Giannina che li regalerà alla figlia...
Forse alla fine si arriverà a un granellino di abbraccio di bene tra Vittoria e suo fratello Andrea, ma sempre condizionato da una convenienza per un lavoro migliore per la sorella.
Giovanna vivrà questo continuum di emozioni e dolori giorno dopo giorno, in continua mutazione quasi da un'ora all'altra;,...
Ma è sempre il peccato e la bugia a determinare la mia vita? E' il male e la malvagità ad avere l'ultima parola sul mio destino? Nell'ultima pagina Giovanna partirà per Venezia, e così si chiude il romanzo... e io mi sono ritrovata a dire, " Qual'è la tua verità Giovanna?.. spero tanto tu sappia da cosa stai scappando, e cosa cerchi..." (less)
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Sofia
Apr 13, 2021Sofia rated it it was ok
Shelves: disappointments, every-unhappy-family, dnf
I'm disappointed.
This isn't the kind of book I normally read, but I picked it up because I saw it in a literary magazine and I figured it would be okay. I had expectations that were not met.
This book is about a girl named Giovanna who overheard her parents comparing her looks to her Aunt Vittoria. She has never met Vittoria, but she assumes that her aunt is ugly because her parents hate her so much. She goes on a journey to find her reflection, which takes her to her aunt and beyond.
The main problem I had with this book was that the teenage narrator didn't feel like a teenager. She didn't think like one, she didn't talk like one. She felt like a middle-aged woman succumbing to ennui.
The dialogue was extremely stilted and lacked vitality. There was no emotion driving the story. This is one of the rare instances when I regret not having listened to the audiobook instead. (To be clear, I have never listened to an audiobook.) A real narrator might have brought this to life. But on paper, it was dull and bland and lacked passion.
1.5 stars
DNF (less)
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Elyse Walters
Sep 05, 2020Elyse Walters rated it really liked it
Shelves: literary-fiction, fiction, europe, coming-of-age
NO SPOILERS
Audiobook....narrated by Marissa Tomei (Marissa was a ‘great’...reading this book). One audiobook reviewer said they thought Tomei ‘over-acted’ her reading. For me she enhanced the storytelling.
Sooooooo.....???
....A fan of the Neapolitan 4 book series? (Book 1, was my least favorite- by far— but the next 3 books were so darn juicy good- I wanted more).
Overall, I loved the series.
....Enjoyed a few other stand alone Ferrante novels - but not all equally? That’s how it’s been for me.
....Curious about how this newly released novel measures up to past work by Elena Ferrante? I think it’s Elena’s best ‘stand-alone’ book to date. But....I'm left thinking about this book with a wide range of thoughts and feelings.
Since I’m sure there are many professional reviews and other reviews sharing the plot and main storyline: I’m going to focus on my feelings and thoughts.
First my feeling:
.....HOLY SH*T! They are mixed.
There was so much teenage angst — associated and entangled with her parents — then her aunt Vittoria— wanting and needing their approval desperately- becoming obsessed with her ‘Giovanna-ok-ness’ — ‘her beauty’ - ‘her worth’ - that it became a brain drain. Giovanna knew how to zap the energy out of me.
I wanted to shake her and yell: “SHUT THE F#CK UP. FOCUS ON YOUR LIFE...MOVE ON....LEAVE THE ADULT PROBLEMS TO THEM. UNHOOK, ALREADY!”......ha...but then we might not have a story at all.
Other feelings:
...... a few scenes were so verbally & visually unsettling....smelling like a dirty toilet ....I was a little creeped out.
......I admit being hooked following most of the perverted dialogue,......(brutally disgusting at times but honest), but when it was repeated - over and over - I felt irritated. (enough already). I felt this book was a combination of ‘page-turning gripping’ & window-book-tossing at the same time. Is that even possible? I guess I’m saying it feels like this is a masterfully written ‘love/hate’ novel.
.....There wasn’t one cozy-warm-lovable character ....but I can’t deny this book drew me in.
..... I have more mixed feelings about the ending. Either a 2nd book is on its way....( Elena was much better in her 2nd book of the Neapolitan series so this could be the same - positive -pattern)....
or.....we had a quick-stop unsatisfying abrupt ending. ( so deal with it).
Thoughts:
.....When I shared this book - naughty parts and all with Paul, including other spoilers ( one I didn’t see coming at all - but made this book more interesting), then told him that this is going to be a Netflix Original Series.....
He said: “enjoy yourself”....he’d pass.
My thoughts were - and still are - kinda defensive FOR this book.....
It’s compelling. It’s well written. It’s reactivating. It’s petty, indulgent, a coming of age original, .....
......but Elena is so damn talented at having us look at dark emotions straight on .... then sinks them in the deep water .... until finally we come up for air questioning... what the heck just happened?
Exhausting... ( not negative...just fitting to the story itself), unsentimental...highly anticipated novel...it’s deep and multifaceted as love is. (less)
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Maxwell
Sep 08, 2020Maxwell rated it really liked it
Ferrante never fails. The Lying Life of Adults is her first standalone (and first work of published fiction) since her mega-hit Neapolitan Quartet. It's hard to follow-up such a critically acclaimed series but she's done it with a tightly crafted and gripping story in this new novel.
Giovanna's father calls her ugly. But not only ugly—that her face is like that of his sister, Vittoria. That comparison, to a woman whom Giovanna knows her parents are less than fond of, in fact have nearly completely cut out of their life, sends her into an existential panic. As she's coming of age—the book begins when she is around twelve years old—she grapples with issues like romance, sex, puberty, friendships, and family through the socio-political lens of Naples. The higher parts of the city are where she finds refinement, but also delusion. Down below, in the darker, grittier neighborhoods, she finds filth, but authenticity. To which part of the city does Giovanna belong? And what will she discover about herself through this voyage into the city and beyond the walls of her home?
As always, Ferrante's writing is fierce and Ann Goldstein's translation is effortless. This is definitely a character-driven story which succeeds precisely because the characters are so strong. Giovanna is the perfect character through which the reader gets to experience the story: she is malleable yet holds strong convictions; she is easily swooned but skeptical of traditional romantic roles and gender expectations; she simultaneously feeds into the cycles she so actively skewers with her sharp tongue and caustic wit.
Perhaps the story itself is a bit slow. At times, even a bit redundant. But it's made up for with vividly imagined characters who jump off the page and probes themes that will resonate with readers across a wide spectrum. Ferrante fans will have something to love in this story, for sure, and it's one I am positive I will find myself returning to again in the future. (less)
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Pedro
Nov 16, 2020Pedro rated it it was amazing
Shelves: destinazione-paradiso
I think it’s safe to say that Ferrante is being marketed as “woman’s literature”. I mean, just look at the cover. Or worse, look at the cover of My Brilliant Friend. Dreadful, isn’t it? But understandable, I guess, especially if we think that her stories revolve about marriage and family dynamics and the majority of readers are women.
So here’s my advice to you, my friends, don’t let yourself be misled by these terrible marketing choices (unless you like fluffy reads) because Elena Ferrante is not a fluffy writer at all.
Ferrante is a great writer and an even better storyteller. I can’t find anything to complain about. In all honesty I find her writing and the way she tells a story strong to the point where sometimes it feels like her novels have been written by a team of talented people working together with the purpose of delivering the “perfect” bestseller. This probably doesn’t make much sense to you but that’s how I feel so I can’t see any reason not to mention it. And besides I’m saying it as a compliment and that’s always a good thing, right?
Speaking of compliments, I’ll have to praise the translator. Once again, her work was spotless.
This story, as I mentioned above and just like Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels revolves mostly around marriage and family dynamics, but I found it to be a lot more controversial. From its opening lines to the unsettling (and a bit cringeworthy) ending this is an ambiguous story destined to divide opinions and/or even make some of its readers angry.
I was never angry though, I’ll have to say. I was actually in awe of the way Ferrante was able to capture so much about what it meant and felt like to be a teenager (in the 1990’s). It was spot on!
The ending wasn’t actually an ending, and things were left in a way that makes it (totally) possible for Giovanna to keep on telling us her life story. And I hope she does. I definitely want more.
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