La vita bugiarda degli adulti è un romanzo di formazione che racconta la fine della giovinezza, con la conseguente distruzione di tutti i miti dell’infanzia, e il passaggio all’età adulta di Giovanna, una ragazzina insicura figlia di due insegnanti a Napoli. Il fattore scatenante è l’infelice paragone con la zia Vittoria, sorella del padre con cui per vari trascorsi familiari non hanno più nulla a che fare. Tra la curiosità verso questa figura carismatica e un moto di ribellione verso la realtà ovattata in cui i genitori l’hanno cresciuta, Giovanna cerca nuovi modelli di riferimento e scopre quanto ingarbugliate siano le bugie dei grandi.

Mi sono avvicinato a questo libro titubante, le recensioni poco entusiaste mi hanno tenuto lontano. Il problema di Elena Ferrante, come di qualsiasi autore/autrice che ha scritto dei libri di un tale successo, è che dovrà sempre muoversi tra due tipi di critiche: niente sarà mai abbastanza simile né abbastanza diverso.

Lo stile ha sempre quello specifico periodare (“Dissi: mi dispiace che stai male, anche io sto male, anche mamma sta male, ed è un po’ ridicolo, non ti pare, che tutto questo male significa che tu ci vuoi bene”), la classe sociale e le età cambieranno ma personaggi diversi coprono ruoli simili, ci sono addirittura concetti familiari (“Di certo mi sentii come se fossi un contenitore di granuli che in modo impercettibile cadevano fuori di me da una fessura minuscola”, che ricorda un po’ la smarginatura di Lila, o il desiderio di sparire: “Oh, potessi davvero perdermi, pensai a un certo punto, lasciarmi da qualche parte come un ombrello e non sapere mai più niente di me”) e l’immancabile Napoli sullo sfondo.

Però. Ogni tanto mi capita di dare un’occhiata alle ultime uscite incensate da editori e giornali, i libri del momento che propone l’editoria italiana, e per quanto non viva per monitorare il panorama attuale (leggo quello che mi pare, insomma), è demoralizzante vedere il livello di certe pubblicazioni. E poi c’è Elena Ferrante. A cui possiamo fare le pulci, ma è una spanna sopra gli altri.

Proseguendo a ritroso la sua bibliografia ho incontrato romanzi a volte acerbi, col senno di poi una premessa per L’amica geniale. La vita bugiarda degli adulti invece è un romanzo solido, che nella sua crudezza mette a fuoco la volubilità di un’adolescente gettata subito nel mondo degli adulti. C’è chi ipotizza un seguito: non mi dispiacerebbe, ma si regge in piedi benissimo da solo.

really gripping idk I loved it

3.5

LOVE. This was just what I hoped it would be. I don't know how true it is to the actual experience of being a self-loathing, self-destructive teenage girl, but it sure felt real, and Ferrante gave me a good idea of the internal and external hows and whys of it. She could have written twice as many pages about these characters and I'd be all over it. (Dare I hope this could be the start of another series?)

This story felt so similar in a lot of ways to what I've read of the author's Neapolitan Novels (which start in the 1950s) that I had to keep reminding myself that this newest book was contemporary to my own life (the narrator is only a few months older than I), but instead of that feeling problematic, I found that it highlighted the timelessness of the issues in a way that worked brilliantly. It magically feels like a book about the Large Questions of Life even while dealing exclusively with the small details of one small person’s limited inner life. As relayed through the perspective of the teenage narrator, this is perfect: everything that happens is small, personal, internal, but it feels like the whole world depends on it. If that's not the teenage experience, what is?

This is a coming-of-age story written for adults, and reading it felt a bit like watching “My So-Called Life” for the first time as an adult and being able to feel both the righteous angst of the teenager as well as the justified anguish of the parents forced to sit in the front row and watch the uncomfortable theater of a young person's life happen while having very little power to direct the action. I loved the complexity of the characters and how people were allowed to change, even quite dramatically, even from minute to minute, and how they were always granted the true-to-life power to be multiple things at once—beloved yet selfish, wise yet cruel, inwardly ashamed yet outwardly unapologetic. Through Giovanna's imperfect understanding of her world, we see how love and hate and both good intentions and bad deeds swirl together in the muddle that characterizes the difference between the bright color-blocked scenes of childhood and the subtle gray landscape of adulthood.

"'Maybe everything would be less complicated if you told the truth.'
She said haltingly: 'The truth is difficult, growing up you'll understand that, novels aren't sufficient for it.'...
Lies, lies, adults forbid them and yet they tell so many."

4.7

This one was for the mf fans! Imagine: the author of a series you love decides to give you more via a spin-off, which happens to be really good, against all odds. That’s not really what this is, but that’s what it felt like. We got girlhood, we got first love and first sex, we got the obsessive homoerotic (?), even the violent, bafflingly hypocritical Adult.

The ending was neater than usual but, like always, very open. Classic!

"Unlike stories, real life, when it has passed, inclines toward obscurity, not clarity." - The Story of the Lost Child

"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 Lying Life of Adults, very first paragraph

I guess she is in the business of writing real life, not stories!

It’s so nice that sometimes, when I’m lucky, I can find a book that captures my whole attention in the exact way that used to happen when I was very young.

Favorite tidbits:

"What are you doing, Angela asked, and she lay down cautiously, gently, on top of me, saying: until a little while ago we fit perfectly and now, look, you're longer than me."

"Angela was right, Roberto had talked to me. But not enough, I wanted to talk to him again and again, now, in the afternoon, tomorrow, forever."

"In my memory, his ironic tone spilled over into explicit mockery. I recalled a contemptuous attitude I'd taken, certain parts of the conversation where I had tried to impress, and I felt cold, nauseated. I wanted to expel myself from myself as if I were about to vomit myself."

A good story, with the solid writing one expects from Elena Ferrante and more keen observation of the culture of poverty. But I just didn't like the characters and was glad to be done with them. If there is a sequel, a la Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet, I have to wonder if I will read it.