The beautiful childlike face of Giovanna has been altered, slowly transforming into an ugly, aggressive teenager. Is this really how things are? And in which mirror should she look to find herself again and be saved? After the happy appearance of her childhood years, Giovanna seeks a new face, balancing between two neighborhoods of Naples where the same blood flows, two neighborhoods that fear and despise each other: Naples high on the hill, wearing its refined mask, and Naples below, pretending to be unrestrained, vulgar. Giovanna wavers from high to low, sometimes falling with force and sometimes climbing slowly, bewildered by the fact that, whether up or down, Naples seems like a city without answers, without escape. "Ferrante proves once again that she is unrivaled in putting us in the mind of a teenage girl, making us see how all those things that seem irrational from the outside—emotional swings, silences, jealousy, fears, and tears—have logic and meaning." — The Times "Ferrante captures in a unique way all that uncertainty we feel when, growing up, we begin to see our parents and adults in general as the real people they are, far from perfect." — AFAR Magazine "Ferrante is unique in combining depth with the joy of reading." — La Stampa "Once again, Ferrante has captured not a story but an entire world." — Il libraio "This Bildungsroman, where the disillusionment of illusions is the dominant motif of Giovanna's difficult transformation from child to adult, succeeds completely thanks, above all, to the exceptional psychological depth of the characters Ferrante creates and the realism of her descriptions." — L’Echo "The Lying Life of Adults has the magnitude of great literature—from Balzac and Stendhal to Proust. It is an essential book, showing how today's women can be 'real, difficult, compassionate,' where Lila and Elena, trapped in the narrow confines of the twentieth century, could not, or could only to a very small extent." — Il Manifesto "Elena Ferrante brings us back to her world which, from book to book, has become our own. Naples is there from the beginning, as well as, more importantly, the unbreakable, complex, painful bond of children with their parents." — La Repubblica "Reading a Ferrante book is like returning home, to those happy moments of childhood—perhaps imaginary—when we asked our parents to read us the same story over and over before we slept. From the first lines, The Lying Life of Adults embraces us and holds us in the same way." — Vanity Fair