The beautiful childhood face of Giovanna has been altered; slowly, she is 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 facade of her childhood years, Giovanna seeks a new face, balancing between two neighborhoods in Naples that run the same blood, two neighborhoods that fear and loathe each other: the high Naples on the hill, wearing its refined mask, and the low Naples, pretending to be wild and vulgar. Giovanna stumbles from the heights to the lows, sometimes falling with force and sometimes climbing slowly, bewildered by the fact that whether up or down, Naples seems to be a city without answers, without escape.

“Ferrante proves once again that she is unrivaled in putting us inside the mind of a teenage girl, making us see how all those things that appear irrational from the outside – the psychological fluctuations, the silences, the jealousy, the fears, and the tears – have logic and meaning.” — The Times

“Ferrante captures in a unique way all this 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 just a story but an entire world.” — Il libraio

“This Bildungsroman, where the disillusionment of illusions is the dominant theme of Giovanna's difficult transformation from child to adult, achieves perfection thanks, above all, to the extraordinary psychological depth of the characters created by Ferrante 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 a necessary 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 degree.” — Il Manifesto

“Elena Ferrante brings us back to her world that, from book to book, has become ours as well. Naples has been there from the beginning, as well as, more importantly, this indissoluble, multifaceted, 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 would ask our parents to read the same story to us over and over before we fell asleep. From the very first lines, The Lying Life of Adults embraces us and holds us in the same way.” — Vanity Fair