The Lying Life of Adults: A Novel Spiral-Bound | September 1, 2020

★ “A girl, a city, an inhospitable society: Ferrante’s formula works again!”—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

★ “Ferrante’s ability to draw in her readers remains unparalleled. [ . . . ] The novel simmers with overt rage toward parental deception, teachers’ expectations and society’s impossible ideals of beauty and behavior.”—BookPage (Starred Review)

★ “Fans of Ferrante’s first two Neapolitan novels, My Brilliant Friend (2012) and The Story of a New Name (2013), will especially revel in Giovanna’s confessional, perceptive, gut-wrenching, and often funny narration of what she calls her ‘arduous approach to the adult world.’”—Booklist (Starred Review)

“What a relief it is when an author who has written a masterpiece returns to prove the gift intact.”—Dayna Tortorici, The New York Times Book Review

“[The Lying Life of Adults] is suspenseful and propulsive; in style and theme, a sibling to [Ferrante’s] previous books. But it’s also a more vulnerable performance, less tightly woven and deliberately plotted, even turning uncharacteristically jagged at points as it explores some of the writer’s touchiest preoccupations.”—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

“In The Lying Life of Adults, Ms. Ferrante once again, with undiminished skill and audacity, creates an emotional force field that has at its heart a young girl on the brink of womanhood.”—Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal

“The Lying Life of Adults affirms that Ferrante is an oracle among authors, writing literary epics as illuminating as origin myths, explaining us to ourselves.”—Claire Luchette, O, The Oprah Magazine

“Ferrante is a specialist in composure: the drama of achieving, losing, feigning, and regaining composure is central to her work.”—Elaine Blair, New York Review of Books

“Nowhere else, as much as in The Lying Life of Adults, do we see Ferrante’s splendidly harsh laws of physics so clearly laid out. Ugliness may hurt, but it is a hurt that strikes clean and true; ugliness may not be pretty, but sometimes it is unbearably beautiful.”—Sarah Chihaya, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Ferrante’s signature frankness about sex and the unruly female body exist alongside reflections on the unreliable stories we share about ourselves.”—Tomi Obaro, BuzzFeed

“The Lying Life of Adults is slinky and scowling as a Neapolitan cat [ . . . ] Gentility, manners and even ideals have no power over sex, which is for Ferrante's characters an almost ungovernable force.”—Annalisa Quinn, NPR

“Yes, this book lives up to its author’s reputation, and then some. [ . . . ] Giovanna’s fate, containing elements both expected and unexpected, makes her one of this year’s most memorable heroines.”—Bethanne Patrick, The Boston Globe

“Exquisitely moody [ . . . ] A marvelously disconcerting novel of disillusionment.”—Merve Emre, The Atlantic

“Biographical details don’t allow us to understand a person. Knowing what someone said is not the same as knowing what they meant. Our true selves appear only through the act of storytelling. We get to know Giovanna by watching her juggle multiple versions of her life rather than by reading one clear interpretation of it. And this, too, is how we should hope to know Ferrante.”—Cleveland Review of Books

“Novels like The Lying Life of Adults do indeed contain wisdom [and] Ferrante lets us both share the intensity of this formative experience and be amused by it. As in the Neapolitan novels, and in much of the best first-person fiction, the relationship between telling one’s life story and understanding oneself is central. As long as it is as well-told as Ferrante’s version, it is a story we never tire of.”—Marion Winik, The Washington Post

“A wild shuffle of moments exhilarating and torturous, The Lying Life of Adults reads like a distillation of adolescence itself.”—Lauren Mechling, Vogue

“The Lying Life of Adults reads like an intimate confession or urgent confidence, and it will leave the reader as shaken and invigorated as it does its young protagonist.”—Jenny Shank, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Ferrante makes Naples come alive in her latest literary feat.”—Newsweek

“Ferrante is still Ferrante — her characters have wide-spanned souls and so does Naples, exuding the smells of the sea and gasoline and baking crust.”—Hillary Kelly, Los Angeles Times

“Prepare to be obsessed all over again.”—Town and Country

“[The Lying Life of Adults] has a timeless quality—the turmoil, judgment and bewildering choices that girls face as their bodies morph and their minds begin to explore independent thought are eternal.”—Belinda Luscombe, TIME Magazine

“The narrative itself is captivating: an up-close portrait of a woman reflecting back on the mysterious years of her adolescence, the transition from child to adult, from youthful ignorance to a deeper, more complicated understanding about her city, those around her, and ultimately, herself.”—Rachel Duboff, Los Angeles Review of Books

“The Lying Life of Adults should absolutely be at the top of your TBR list this September.”—Barnes & Noble Reads

“[Ferrante is] a writer whose work transcends genre.”—Lewis Beale, The Daily Beast

“Ferrante’s depiction of pubescent angst leaps off the page, never flinching away from the agony of minor humiliations [ . . . ] Ferrante knows exactly how to tell a story.”—Claire Fallon, Huffington Post

“The Lying Life of Adults shares with Ferrante’s great Neapolitan novels the sly knack of undercutting whatever straightforward thing it seems to be saying on its surface.”—Laura Miller, Slate

“It’s a safe bet that the mysterious Ferrante’s new stand-alone novel, about a teenage girl scouring Naples in search of the estranged aunt with whom she allegedly bears a resemblance, will be one of the most book-clubbed books of the year.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“The Lying Life of Adults is a gripping novel about coping with change and creating the closure you need to move forward.”—ForeWord Reviews

“With the publication of The Lying Life of Adults, we see an author at her peak.”—Asymptote Magazine

“Ferrante has a gift, perhaps even a genius, for making great literature out of melodrama.”—Judith Thurman, The New Yorker

INTERNATIONAL PRAISE FOR THE LYING LIFE OF ADULTS

“Elena Ferrante is so good [ . . . ] An astonishing, deeply moving tale of the sorts of wisdom, beauty and knowledge that remain as unruly as the determinedly inharmonious faces of these women.”—The Guardian

“Ms Ferrante’s unique style—again superbly captured by Ann Goldstein’s translation—is as urgent as ever, proceeding by confrontation and volcanic self-revelation, with little traditional description.”—The Economist

“The Lying Life of Adults is the most intense writing about the experiences and interior life of a girl on the cusp of adulthood that I have ever read. It is brilliant.”—Financial Times

“Somehow, Ferrante finds and asks the question that is at the heart of the adolescent experience, that underscores all the pettiness and the posturing and the bravado and the crippling self-doubt.”—Esquire (UK)

“Ferrante’s page-turner talent for suspenseful storytelling and vigorously peopled scenes is on peak form.”—The Times, Best Fiction Books of 2020

“There is an undeniable pleasure in experiencing the world through Ferrante’s lens. Her characters have a physical quality that is difficult to quantify. The Lying Life of Adults will definitely satisfy hardcore fans as well as win her new ones.”—The Winnipeg Free Press