Elena Ferrante, “La Vita Bugiarda Degli Adulti,” Mini Review

I read Ferrante’s latest novel (the title of the English translation is The Lying Life of Adults) over the Easter break and it felt like coming home. I don’t know whether I am prepared to say that it is “objectively” better than her other stand-alone novels (other than the Brilliant Friend saga, I mean), but it spoke to me in a way that they didn’t.

I liked them all, don’t get me wrong – and in one or two cases (e.g. The Lost Daughter), even very much; but none of them gave me that feeling of loss and grief which I got when I finished the Neapolitan saga. I am sure many readers know the feeling I am talking about, although not necessarily related to those books. I still remember thinking, for weeks, “why bother starting off a new novel? I already know it won’t be about Lila and Lenù, so…”

Well, La Vita Bugiarda Degli Adulti gave me that feeling again. And, call me predictable, but I really wish this is the beginning of a new saga (I have no reason to believe that it is, but if you have any intel, please share it). I want to see Giovanna (and her friend Ida, and Ida’s sister, and Giuliana) “become adults like no one else has before” (my own translation from the Italian, I have no access to the English translation); I want to see whether her male peers – and Roberto in particular – will disappoint or not; I want to see whether the adults in her life will age gracefully or bitterly; and, finally, I want to see how Giovanna’s Naples will evolve, and which other cities she will escape to.

In a way, the reasons why this book can enchant fans of the Neapolitan saga are quite obvious: it contains many of the the same tropes – the coming of age theme; the realisation that those around you are lying, but also that they are just doing it to survive; the ambivalent relationship with Naples, or better put with the many Naples out there.

I am not sure this is everything, though. My hunch is simply that Ferrante is amazing at girls even more than she is at grown-up women. Her portrayal of female childhood and adolescence is just unique, and feels so raw and true to so many female readers (this one included, of course). I don’t know whether I can quite put the finger on why that is the case. One big thing for me, for sure, is how her girls are simultaneously well-rounded characters that are wholly believable as (present and future) heroines, and yet so full of self-loath in a way that, sure, almost always comes with puberty, but especially with female puberty. You know how feminists teach us that navigating inadequacy and indeed self-disgust is a big part of what it means to become a woman (to come of age) in the patriarchy, like a rite of passage of sorts? Yup, that, just in story-telling. So, quite naturally, a book that is entirely about that coming of age phase – and about looking at adults with increasing disenchantment and understanding at the same time – just hit the spot for me in a way that her other stand-alone novels, all about adult women, did not. In the Neapolitan Saga, I remained attached to Lila and Lenù also later in life, but it was because I knew their story, I knew where they came from. I knew why they couldn’t possibly step out of their  f****d-up dynamic of mutual admiration, deep intimacy, mutual judgement and fierce competition (also over men, of course!), all mashed up together in a hot, interesting mess. I concur with those who say that the saga captures female friendship with all its ambivalences like no other work of fiction had done before. But it is as girls, as women-in-the-making, that we learn the patterns and modalities of that special kind of relationship – which then stay with us, whether with girlfriends we have since childhood or with female friends we make as grown-up women. So maybe the great thing about the saga is how it makes the case that learning to “do” female friendship and becoming a woman, period are largely one and the same thing. With Giovanna we have another great example of that.