PositiveTIMEThe Lying Life of Adults takes a magnifying glass to the difficult patch of terrain that girls have to negotiate when they move, as the old sex-education movies like to put it, from girl to woman. Ferrante sugarcoats little of this rite of passage. Even such romance-infused interludes as first love and sexual discovery are dark experiences. Giovanna undergoes a period of self-loathing so deep that she experiences \'a very violent need for degradation\' ... Although set in the early 1990s, the novel does not feel contemporary. The young characters’ lack of political awareness and digital devices evokes nostalgia for an extinct type of less mediated childhood. But it 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. It’s a coming-of-age novel, yes, but not for those who are coming of age.
Elena Ferrante
RaveTIMEThe shoals of brutality that live beneath the surface of outwardly civilized people are familiar territory for fans of Ferrante ... If the Neapolitan novels represented the span of late 20th century womanhood, The Lying Life of Adults takes a magnifying glass to the difficult patch of terrain that girls have to negotiate when they move, as the old sex-education movies like to put it, from girl to woman. Ferrante sugarcoats little of this rite of passage. Even such romance-infused interludes as first love and sexual discovery are dark experiences ... It’s a coming-of-age novel, yes, but not for those who are coming of age. Ferrante raises a periscope into the ferocious inner workings of adolescent minds and spirits ... If there is a moral for the type of educated readers represented perhaps by Giovanna’s parents, it is this: adults cannot sculpt how their children turn out, no matter how diligently they work at it.
