The Lying Life of Adults

Giovanna’s parents split up two years after Andrea’s affair with Costanza comes to light. Andrea moves into a beautiful apartment by the sea with Costanza, Angela, and Ida. He still visits Nella and Giovanna, and when he does it seems that Giovanna’s parents might mend things. But then they fight, and Andrea leaves, sometimes for months on end. Though once enchanted with her aunt’s presence, Giovanna blames Aunt Vittoria for ruining her parents’ relationship and avoids her at all costs. When Aunt Vittoria begins phoning again to speak with Giovanna, Giovanna not only pretends to be away but also stops wearing her aunt’s bracelet. As these events unfold around Giovanna, she asks herself why, “in the world of adults, in the heads of very reasonable people, in their bodies loaded with knowledge […] adults can so easily become “[…] the most untrustworthy animals, worse than reptiles?” (131). Like in the previous chapter, Giovanna knows the answers to the hard questions she posits, but she ignores the answers because they hurt her too much.

Giovanna also credits obsessing over how things turn out with helping her disassociate. She also struggles with her previous dichotomies of good and bad, and refined and unrefined.