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I finally read this and of course I loved it, just like I have loved all the Elena Ferrante books I've read.

I love this Elena Ferrante's coming-of-age novel set in 1990's Naples. Highly recommended🙂

“…my mother was indivisible and inviolable, she belonged to me alone. Her body I considered mine…mine even her thoughts, which…could be occupied only by me…” Elena Ferrante being excellent on women, on motherhood, as always. This writing, these fiercely intelligent characters, the intensity of everything. I‘m always part in love/part terrified when reading her books. Ps this cover ❤️ 💜

Typical Ferante style, but not as good as her Neapolitan Quartet.

#elenaferante #vacation #holidayread #novel

enjoyed most of it, usually ferrante has super powerful endings and movements within and i just kinda felt like this didn‘t go anywhere. but i liked it

she is one of my favorite authors and captures what it might be like to be a woman growing up in southern italy. great themes around finding your own way…family…the myth of our parents and more.

Tuesday night‘s scores at the book swap on my way home from Ballet.

Well, that was over-wrought! Granted, Giovanna is a teenager navigating a family break-up. And I've never really got the necessity that most women and girls seem to have, to be considered beautiful in the eyes of others. Given that this is the novel's inciting incident, this book and I were unlikely ever to be a good match. EF writes wonderfully, but so much unnecessary emotional drama gives me a headache. It's good, just not my cup of tea.

4/5 🌟

Slow but honest, brutal and clever. This book is a good reminder that we are all flawed, insecure and hypocritical.

Written in the adult voice of Neopolitan Giovanna Trada, this gripping, nearly obsessive narrative is largely a psychological and emotional “coming-of-age“ story. Giovanna retraces her adolescent years of struggling to unearth and reconstruct the truth behind the seemingly well-mannered life that her parents had constructed; while simultaneously trying to forge her own independent identity. A pick for me, with lot's of ⭐️s!

In this story, with self-explanatory title, we observe adults through the eyes of a teen girl. Interesting story, but Ferrante isn‘t author for me, and maybe with her next book I‘m going to figure it out, what exactly I don‘t like in her writing … 🤷🏻‍♀️

Feeling very happy that I booked an extra Monday off work after my holiday. Daisy and I are enjoying the autumn sunshine.

Almost Napoli (in Scotland)🌞🌞

New book, same sleeping dog (she has moved from my last post - we had a lunchtime walk and swim).

I love this author. She writes so beautifully. She really delves into the drama and the intricacies of relationships. Particularly the toxic and dishonest ones

Just as good as I hoped it would be.

I enjoyed this but it took a while to get into it. The end is great - a coming of age novel. I liked how betrayal was a theme throughout in the love lives of the adults in Gianni‘s life.

Ugliness, secrets and betrayals are the three words I use to describe this story. I didn‘t like the main character but I understood her. Worth a read! #boxwalla

The always-brilliant Elena Ferrante delivers again, though this one does not quite reach the heights of the Neapolitan books. Giovanna, a fairly sheltered teen, wants to meet her aunt Vittoria, her father‘s sister, since her father is not close to his family and she does not know them well. Instead she finds herself drawn into another world where adult behavior is not what she expected or what she had been promised.

The first of many books by Elena Ferrante🥰

Ferrante says : ‘ When I write it‘s as if I were butchering eels, I pay little attention to the unpleasantness of the situation.‘ I loved this book , I love her bluntness , her melodrama, & how she makes that great. I feel I‘ve been in Naples... I‘ve lived in the gritty melodrama of the characters ( great characters 👌🏻) lives.
A pic of our local Cafe .. Napoli ..
For #Translatedintoyour1stLanguage #Booked2021
Thanks Helen , I LOVED this book

I won‘t get much reading done tonight ... tired 😴... but , I‘m very excited about my morning walk & ready to go , starting this one on audible... @squirrelbrain

My favourite audiobook of the year so far. We follow Giovanna, who is 12 as the book begins, and overhears a throwaway remark by her father that changes the course of her adolescence.

Ferrante is so good at inhabiting the mind of a teenage girl, I felt like I was Giovanna as you live all of her mixed-up feelings of love, anger, fear and longing.

Marisa Tomei is just *fabulous* as the narrator!

Meg and Cathy- I think you‘ll love this one!

Just started this and the character writing is already so good. I am invested in finding out what will happen to this so called ugly girl.

The Lying Life of Adults is an amazing book. It begins with one of those moments from childhood when the flaws of adults are brought to light, and continues by following how this plays out in Giovanna‘s life. I was captivated by her relationships with family and friends, but the latter part of the book was not as interesting for some reason. Book Two finished for #MarvellousMarch 🌼

An interior novel that is somehow a page turner. Giovanna‘s coming of age in Naples is a visceral experience and I loved every bit of it.

He took off his shoes, pants and underpants. He kept on his linen jacket, shirt, tie, and, right below, the erect member that stuck out past legs and bare feet like a quarrelsome tenant who‘s been disturbed.

“Poetry is made up of words, exactly like the conversation we‘re having. If the poet takes our banal words & frees them from the bounds of our talk, you see that from within their banality they manifest an unexpected energy. God manifests himself in the same way.”
“The poet isn‘t God, he‘s simply someone like us who knows how to create poems.”

I‘d thought I couldn‘t live without him, but time was passing, I continued to live.

I‘m still struggling with an awful endless-pandemic-reading-slump and getting through books very slowly but elena ferrante is one of the most reliably 5⭐️ authors for me and this didn‘t fail me at all. Very bitter in places, melancholy and difficult for sure, but her heroines have so much life and the writing is so beautiful. A gorgeous book to read slowly

What happened, in the world of adults, in the heads of very reasonable people, in their bodies loaded with knowledge? What reduced them to the most untrustworthy animals, worse than reptiles?
(Internet photo)

I recalled what he had once told me, that the dead are objects that have broken, a television, the radio, the mixer, and the best thing is to remember them as they were when they were working, because the only acceptable tomb is memory.

My latest library haul. 😁

New in but not really! I started reading this in the summer and got sidetracked and now it‘s finally back in my hot little hands. Attempting to pick up around where I left off.

Elena Ferrante non delude mai ❤

Tough call on this book, I liked it but I didn‘t. Adolescence is tough. Giovanna is smart and that is what I liked best about her journey.

Drew me in from the beginning. Writing felt very similar to My Brilliant Friend series. Ferrante always finds a way to make you feel connected to the characters.

My #DashingDecember success continues with my second of two library books.

The pacing and tone is exactly what I was expecting from this new Elena Ferrante. It read much quicker than any of the Neapolitan books but still packed the same kind of punch. The characters were rich and very flawed, making this a frustratingly enjoyable read.

#SleighTheShelves Day 4: What a #Gift to have a yusband who cooks. Homemade Beef kare-kare for our super long National Day weekend.

#ForeverNovember Day 24: Finished reading The Memory Of Babel last night (#StartsWithT) and excited to continue reading tagged book semi-exclusively - also #StartsWithT

Book 167 of 2020.

#ForeverNovember Day 22: I absolutely #love Middle Eastern dessert. These are nutella kunafa and basbousa with hazelnut. Both are 👌🏽and 🤩🥰💕

#ThankfulThoughts Day 20: #InnerBeauty and outer beauty seem like major themes in this newest novel of Ferrante which I naturally had to purchase immediately - notwithstanding my bookshelves of unread titles.

Ferrante‘s writing is just as musical as her other books. It flows and deeply made me fall into the story.

My expectations were sky high. The writing (and presumably translating) is brilliant. Ferrante has this way of letting you into someone‘s head with all its attendant complexities and contradictions. I was lukewarm on the story and tore through it anyways.

Weekend plans