A review by jupitervivienne
The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante is so highly praised and recommended, so I was looking forward to finally coming around to one of her books. Maybe this just wasn’t the best work of hers to start with, but I’m pretty disappointed. The first part of this book leading up meeting Vittoria felt raw and exciting, but as it went on I felt like it was almost becoming a parody of itself. Vittoria is set up as an incredibly interesting character but Ferrante doesn’t go deep enough with her. Her exploration of Giovanna sort of tells me she might not have been capable of what I wanted from Vittoria. I fought to keep going with this book, holding out hope it might get better (and maybe it does), but just had to eventually give up. I’m sure the bad audio narration didn’t help. 2/5 stars