| Naples, Italy |
BOOKS OF THE YEAR
The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante review – a bracing return to Naples
Two generations on from Lenù and Lila, a young girl’s reunion with an estranged aunt offers a compelling story of family, desire and betrayal
Sun 30 Aug 2020 13.00 BST
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inking into the new Elena Ferrante, I had a sudden sense of the intense pleasure Dickens’s readers must have experienced at receiving the latest monthly instalment of one of his novels. How bracing to be back in Ferrante’s Neapolitan world, where troubling passions and moral ambiguity stalk characters of whatever gender, class or degree of righteous illumination. How exhilarating to engage once more with her textured depictions of family life, of friendships and loves striated by hate and the demon envy – all so vividly rendered into English through the skills of translator Ann Goldstein.