“Ferrante’s feat is in the clarity with which we apprehend Giovanna’s self-imposed torment [ . . . ] Adulthood is a lie. And Ferrante’s novel, three hundred pages of quick and honest prose, does its best to shatter the facade of adulthood [ . . . ] This novel — it bends every rule on the sheet. It’s highly imitative, [the] narrative itself is all hurt and its epiphanies. [Ferrante] is decoupling the value of writing from its content, and that’s the biggest achievement of The Lying Life of Adults [ . . .] But the point isn’t to know the truth. It’s to live with the lies, because we do that anyway. The Lying Life of Adults. Not adult lives that lie, for “lying” as an attribute of life, a condition. If you’re living, you’re lying.”
Read the full review on Scroll.In.
