The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

Translated by Ann Goldstein

Read by Marisa Tomei

Published September 2020 (translated edition) by Europa Editions

Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

Giovanna’s pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father clearly despise? Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is.

Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves from one to the other in search of the truth, but neither city seems to offer answers or escape.

Named one of 2016’s most influential people by TIME Magazine and frequently touted as a future Nobel Prize-winner, Elena Ferrante has become one of the world’s most read and beloved writers. With this new novel about the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, Ferrante proves once again that she deserves her many accolades. In The Lying Life of Adults, readers will discover another gripping, highly addictive, and totally unforgettable Neapolitan story.

My Thoughts:

So that I don't forget, let's just start with the reader - Marisa Tomei is terrific. So often when a famous person is reading, it's hard to get past the fact that you know the voice and stop putting that person's face to the characters. But I completely forgot that I knew who was reading the book, Tomei's voice is unrecognizable. 

Now, as for the book, Ferrante juxtaposes the lower Naples lower class and the upper Naples bourgeoisie, here in a coming-of-age tale that has young Giovanna awakening to the lies her parents have been telling her and each other. Running from them, Giovanna only finds more disillusionment, from the aunt that she at first adored to the young man she has come to idolize and, eventually, to herself as she finds that lying now comes naturally to her as well. 

Looking back at what has transpired, from the beginning of the book, Giovanna tells us everything we need to know about what will transpire and about Ferrante's writing.

"I slipped away, and am still slipping away, within these lines that are intended to give me a story, while in fact I am nothing, nothing of my own, nothing that has really begun or really been brought to completion: only a tangled knot, and nobody, not even the one who at this moment is writing, knows if it contains the right thread for a story or is merely a snarled confusion of suffering, without redemption."

If you're a fan of Ferrante's (and Goldstein, who has translated all of her books), this one will not disappoint. 

Life: It Goes On - November 29

Happy Sunday! I hope you all found some way to celebrate Thanksgiving this past week that was safe and worked for your family to still be able to feel some connection. The Big Guy and Mini-him went to my parents' for a few hours. We ate in separate rooms, spent part of the day on the front porch in our coats, and Mini-him, who travels, even ate his meal on the deck just to be safer. It was far from our usual orchestrated chaos of 20 people crowded around the tables but we had most of the favorite foods, the guys did the annual field goal kicking, and, most importantly, my parents were not alone. 

Now here I am on day four of a four-day weekend and I'm trying to muster up the energy to start the Christmas decorating. Maybe it's not a matter of energy so much as it's a matter of "why bother," as Miss H keeps asking me. But this year is terrible enough as it is; I can't bear to think of making it even more unusual. So I'll spend some more time before Miss H leaves for home and then I'll shoot to finish at least one room today. Maybe that will put me in the mood.

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Still listening to Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom. I'm finding that it is not a book that I can listen to when I'm not fully focused so I can't really listen to it while I'm working. I'll probably finish it up tomorrow. I don't have anything else coming up soon, book-wise, so then I'll turn to podcasts. 

Watched: Our great-nephew is a freshman on the football team at Kansas University. Last night he got his first start and it was so exciting to not only get to watch him play at that level but to get to see him have a great game and to hear the announcers raving about him. Looking forward to watching him play a lot more!

Read: I have so many book due back to the library or that will expire on Netgalley this week and no interest whatsoever in actually picking up a book and reading it. I hardly picked up a book at all last week.

Made: Thanksgiving dinner...twice. We took in ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cranberries to my parents then I made all of that all over again for the kids on Saturday plus cornbread casserole and pie. 

Enjoyed: Family, even if it some of that time together had to be by Zoom. 

This Week I’m:  

Planning: On getting the decorating done, getting Mini-me's and Ms. S's gift shopping finished and the gifts shipped, and starting some crafting. 

Thinking About: My sister and brother-in-law who, despite being extremely cautious for months because of my brother-in-law's health, caught CoVid last weekend just as they arrived at their new home. It's been a scary week for those of us who love them. It looks like they will be fine...eventually; but they have been miserable for a week. They have never been far from my thoughts this week. 

Feeling: Frustrated that so many still don't take this virus seriously. Mini-him was traveling last week with a co-worker who had left for their trip knowing his wife was sick (to be fair, she was not diagnosed with CoVid until two days after they left but you have to assume CoVid these days if someone is sick, especially if you have just returned from a trip to Mexico with a group of friends). It's the second time in two weeks a co-worker has put Mini-him at risk. Mama Bear is not happy about that!

Looking forward to: Trying my hand at some new crafts this week and retrying a craft I haven't done in 45 years. I'd tell you about it but then I'd have to admit if it's a complete failure!

Question of the week: Do you make any of your gifts for the holidays?

Before The Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson

Before The Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson

Read by Guy Lockard

Published September 2020 by Nancy Paulsen Books

Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

For as long as ZJ can remember, his dad has been everyone's hero. As a charming, talented pro football star, he's as beloved to the neighborhood kids he plays with as he is to his millions of adoring sports fans. But lately life at ZJ's house is anything but charming. His dad is having trouble remembering things and seems to be angry all the time. ZJ's mom explains it's because of all the head injuries his dad sustained during his career. ZJ can understand that--but it doesn't make the sting any less real when his own father forgets his name. As ZJ contemplates his new reality, he has to figure out how to hold on tight to family traditions and recollections of the glory days, all the while wondering what their past amounts to if his father can't remember it. And most importantly, can those happy feelings ever be reclaimed when they are all so busy aching for the past?

My Thoughts:

I didn't even look at the summary before I requested this book from my library. I only needed to know that Woodson had written it to know that it would be a book worth reading. 

You will have noticed that I read very few young adult books. It's not that the young adult books I've read haven't been good; they have for the most part. But, for some reason, they almost always feel like books written by an adult trying to write as a young person (which, of course, they are). Woodson manages, though, to write in the voice of a young adult while also writing beautifully lyrical novels. 

Before The Ever After is no exception; in fact, it is written almost entirely in verse. In reviews of Woodson's books (including mine), you will invariably see the word "spare." She is a master of saying so much with so little. Here in just over 170 pages, she gives us a unique father-son story that begins with a family on top of the world to a family facing an unknown, frightening future. ZJ's identity is wrapped up in being the son of "Zachariah 44" Johnson, football star. So when his father can no longer play football, ZJ wonders who he will be. 

Woodson sets her story just at the time that chronic traumatic encephalopathy is being diagnosed in football players. This book is a tough reminder for people like me, who are huge football fans, that it is a dangerous game that takes a huge toll on the players. It's not that I wasn't aware that that it's a toll that is also suffered by those players' families; but reading about it from the point of view of a young son who is losing not only his father but also one of his best friends, has me, once again, seriously thinking about whether or not I can keep supporting the sport. It's hard to imagine being a twelve-year-old who is watching his father disappear along with so many people the family has considered friends. It's hard to read about it, even when it's told beautifully. 

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Read by Geoffrey Cantor
Published 1999 by Doubleday
Source: bought this one

Publisher's Summary: 

Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable.

When Frank is fatally stabbed, Lionel's world is suddenly turned upside down, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case, while trying to keep the words straight in his head.

My Thoughts:

Shortly after seeing the Edward Norton movie adaptation of this book, I was delighted to find the audiobook as one of Apple Books' daily deals. The Big Guy and I had seen the movie with friends and we were all impressed with the movie - the story, the acting, the setting. I was really looking forward to having the story fleshed out by the book. 

Almost immediately it became clear that one of the liberties that Norton took with the adaptation was to set the movie about 40 years earlier than the book. Ok, I thought, I can do that. In fact, I thought it might help to keep me from picturing the movie if the sets and costumes are completely different. And for the first hour of the book, I found that the movie had stuck quite closely to the book. After that, though, almost the only part of the book that Norton had taken from the book was Lionel working to solve Frank's death, both with and without the help of the other three men Frank had saved from the orphanage (coined "Motherless Brooklyn" by Frank's brother). It was, to be honest, more than a little disappointing; I had really enjoyed Norton's story. I'm sure, though, that it was an even bigger disappointment to Lethem to find that Norton didn't care for his plot at all. 

I kept at it for a couple of reasons. First of all, Geoffrey Cantor did a terrific job of reading the book, particularly in giving voice to Lionel. Then, the plot of the book drew me in. There was every bit as much intrigue as there was in the movie and almost as much complexity to it. It's well written neo-noir with characters and dialogue that made me see why Norton had chosen to set the book in the 1940's. Finally, Lionel is such an interesting and unique character who I found even more interesting in the book than I had in the movie. I've never known anyone with Tourette's Syndrome so I can't speak to how realistic Lionel's tics were but it certainly felt believable to served to make me want Lionel to succeed. 

If you've seen the movie, you've been forewarned - this is not that book; well, not entirely. If you haven't seen the movie yet, read (no, listen!) to the book first. Then see the movie. Because it really is very good. 

Life: It Goes On - November 22

Happy Sunday! What a strange Thanksgiving week we are entering. None of my siblings are coming, none of their kids, and only, maybe, one of our kids will be with us at my parents' on Thursday. Assuming neither my mom nor I balk at the last minute and decide we can't risk their health by being together. My mom has everything she would need to put a holiday meal on the table and so do I, just in case. We tried to buy a half ham or a small turkey but there are none to be found in Omaha (or at least not in any grocery store near us); it no one is planning the usual big event. Could that mean enough people are starting to take this seriously enough that we might be able to avoid completely overwhelming our healthcare system? I certainly hope so.

Last Week I: 

 Listened To: I finished Tana French's The Searchers Thursday and started Yaa Gyasi's latest, Transcendent Kingdom, Friday. In between, I listened to some podcasts, including Root of Evil, Singing Bones, and The History Chicks. 

Watched: Football (still in mourning about our Huskers), The Voice, Grace and Frankie, and a couple of episodes of The Queen's Gambit. 

Read: I finished Where The Crawdads Sing just before my bookclub met to discuss it on Tuesday and then I went back to Dark Tides. I discovered that Dark Tides is the second in a series when I was about 100 pages in and was impressed that I hadn't been able to tell earlier. Now I'm really feeling like the books should be read in order; there are dual story lines and they hardly intersect which I'm sure makes more sense if you've read the first book.

Made: Tried something new this week - chicken florentine which we both liked a lot. I always hew to the new recipes pretty closely the first time I try something but when I saw it called for only a "pinch" of seasoning, I laughed and tossed in a tablespoon or so. Next time I may add even more and (here's something I thought I'd never hear myself say) more spinach. 

Enjoyed: A record warm day Thursday. I took off work a couple of hours early and used the time to paint a chair for my office (once upon a time it was in Miss H's room, hence the hot pink). Earlier in the week, The Big Guy and I worked on the garage, which you wouldn't think would be enjoyable, but is for me, especially when it looked so much better when we finished. 

This Week I’m:  

Planning: To start making Christmas gifts this week. Yea me, for not waiting until the last minute this year! I'm going to try my hand at some bookish crafts but if they turn out, I won't be able to show them to you until after Christmas. 

Thinking About: I'll start taking down Thanksgiving this week (although I'll leave the dining room decorated since we'll celebrate with Miss H on Saturday) and then Friday I'll bring up the Christmas bins. I'm torn between keeping it really low key (since we can't entertain in December) and going all out because we need to be festive where we can. We'll see where my brain is at next weekend!

Feeling: I'm pretty sure that you can tell that the stress of this virus is wearing on me this week. Mini-him has been exposed again for the second time in two weeks through work and now we are waiting again for him to be able to get in and get tested. My family has been very careful through all of this but when you have to work, there's only so much you can do. 

Looking forward to: Seeing my parents this week, even if we will be eating in an entirely different room and having to shout to talk to each other!

Question of the week: Have you tried any new recipes lately? Anything I should try?