The lying life of adults, by Elena Ferrante

Teenage angst, Neapolitan style. I read “My brilliant friend,” the first of the pseudonymous Ferrante’s wildly acclaimed Neapolitan quartet when it first came out. I liked it but didn’t feel at all compelled to go forward with the next three books. She just must not speak to me. In her newest novel, also receiving rapturous reviews, the narrator, Giovanna, is living a comfortable life with her two loving parents, her father a respected scholar and professor, her mother a teacher of ancient languages in a private high school She’s twelve as the book opens and she overhears her father say, “Adolescence has nothing to do with it: she’s getting the face of Vittoria.” She is devastated as this person is his hated sister who lives a squalid life in a downhill neighborhood of Naples, not up in the refined and rarified area where Giovannia lives. She insists on finally meeting this witch-like aunt, which sets in motion the events of the next four years. It is a story of lies, bound together, even shackled, by a bracelet that Vittoria first claims she gave to Giovanna as an infant. This bracelet will show up on multiple women’s arms, young and old, as the book moves forward in time, each with a different story about how it became hers. No one comes out looking good, not even the narrator. I’m sure I’m just missing something, but mostly I came away feeling relieved not to have grown up in Naples in the 1990s. 322 pp.