The Lying Life of Adults

The Lying Life of Adults (2020) by Elena Ferrante is a work of fiction. Set in Naples, Italy, the narrative is a coming-of-age story, also known as a bildungsroman, told by Giovanna Trada. Giovanna details her adolescence from 13 to 16 years of age and the growing pains she endured while searching for identity and autonomy. Themes include the struggle between good and evil, women as either sinners or saints, and compunction and gender roles, among others. Ferrante is best known for her Neapolitan series, including the novel My Brilliant Friend. This study guide utilizes the 2020 Europa Editions translation by Anne Goldstein.

Plot Summary

Thirteen-year-old Giovanna Trada overhears her father, Andrea, compare her features to his mean-spirited sister Aunt Vittoria. Giovanna is already stressed about her changing body, including recently getting her period. Now, she also fears that her changing body signifies a personality because Aunt Vittoria is synonymous with internal and external ugliness. Giovanna wants to see her aunt’s face to determine if she is indeed becoming someone reprehensible to her parents.

Giovanna tries sleuthing around her parents’ bedroom for pictures of her aunt. Her mother, Nella, realizes what’s going on and asks Giovanna pointedly whether she wants to know about Aunt Vittoria. Nella then tells Giovanna about how deceptive Aunt Vittoria is. Aunt Vittoria hates Andrea because he revealed that she was having an affair with a married policeman named Enzo. Aunt Vittoria has never forgiven him. Despite learning about her aunt’s hatred, Giovanna still wants to meet her aunt and isn’t satisfied until her parents agree to a meeting.

Upon meeting, Giovanna thinks Aunt Vittoria is beautiful. However, Aunt Vittoria is also everything that Giovanna’s parents raised her not to be: cruel, unwomanlike, crude, and overly emotional. Aunt Vittoria immediately sets about turning Giovanna against her parents, instructing her niece to look closely at the carefully constructed façade her parents maintain. The aunt also tells a slightly different version of the story that Giovanna has heard, inspiring Giovanna with her love r for a man who transformed her world before his death (a death she blames on Andrea). Aunt Vittoria also maintains that she gave Giovanna a beautiful bracelet once, though Giovanna has never heard of this bracelet. Now Giovanna has two versions of the truth. She wants to spend more time with her aunt and see life through a different lens.

Giovanna likes her aunt so much that she begins lying to her friends Ida and Angela about her aunt’s benevolence. When she later visits Enzo’s gravesite, Aunt Vittoria reveals that she is friends with Margherita and her children—Enzo’s family. Margherita took pity on Aunt Vittoria, with a benevolence that exceeds the goodness and refinement Andrea and Nella try to cultivate. She eventually introduces Giovanna to Margherita’s family, as well as to the rest of the Trada family that lives in the lower portion of Naples known as the Industrial Zone. Giovanna begins seeing herself as two different people: a quiet, dutiful daughter called Giovanna, and a rebellious, spirited adult shaped by her aunt.

At dinner one night, Giovanna spies Ida and Angela’s father, Mariano, touching feet with her mother. She’s afraid to tell Aunt Vittoria because she knows her aunt will try to ruin her parents. Meanwhile, when Giovanna introduces Ida and Angela to her aunt, chaos ensues. Shortly after this visit, Giovanna’s world in fact comes undone but for a reason other than she thinks. She learns that her father has been having a 15-year affair with Mariano’s wife, Costanza. The affair, discovered by Aunt Vittoria when meeting Ida and Angela, involves a bracelet that Costanza wears. The bracelet is the very same bracelet that Aunt Vittoria left for Giovanna as a present. Andrea tricked Aunt Vittoria into leaving it for Giovanna and then gave it to his mistress. When the affair surfaces, Giovanna’s adolescent life plunges into rebellion, mistrust, and anger.

Giovanna abandons her former pursuits in favor of teenage angst. She engages in sexual encounters to experience sex and to rebel against her parents. She remains conflicted about her nature until she listens to a young man named Roberto one day and falls in love. Giovanna then tries repairing her life inwardly to better algin with Roberto’s message about compunction and obedience. From this point forward, Giovanna struggles with wanting Roberto as a mentor and also as a romantic interest.

Roberto and Giovanna become friends through his fiancée, Giuliana. Giuliana is Margherita’s daughter, and she now wears Aunt Vittoria’s bracelet after the aunt demanded it back from Giovanna. Giovanna accompanies Giuliana to visit Roberto in Milan one weekend. When Giuliana leaves the bracelet behind, Giovanna uses it as an excuse to return and seduce Roberto. Just when Roberto hints that he’s eager to have sex with Giovanna, Giovanna realizes that she wants to be Roberto’s equal and not his sexual conquest.

Giovanna later has sex with a boy named Rosario on a whim. Back in possession of the bracelet, she leaves it purposely at his house. She then reconnects with Ida, who is going through a rebellious phase, and the girls go to Venice.