Learning to love and to lie
MISTAKES, IN ELENA FERRANTE’S new novel, are like prized family jewels, handed down from one generation to another. Both tend to cause strife and reveal weaknesses, but they’re also very hard to let go of. In The Lying Life of Adults, the latest work from the Italian author to be translated into English, Ferrante builds on the coming-of-age themes of her venerated Neapolitan series: the ferocious inner lives of young women, and how the things they inherit—be they beauty, brains or bracelets—are both a blessing and a curse.
The first of the quartet, thrust Ferrante into the limelight 28 years into her career An unlikely
