The Lying Life of Adults

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (October 2020) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Das lügenhafte Leben der Erwachsenen]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Das lügenhafte Leben der Erwachsenen}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

The Lying Life of Adults

Cover of first edition (Italy)
Author	Elena Ferrante
Audio read by	Anna Bonaiuto[1]
Original title	La vita bugiarda degli adulti
Translator	Ann Goldstein
Language	Italian
Set in	Naples
Publisher	Edizioni e/o
Publication date	7 November 2019[2]
Publication place	Italy
Published in English	1 September 2020
Media type	Print (paperback)
Pages	336
ISBN	9788833571683
OCLC	1128092847

The Lying Life of Adults (Italian: La vita bugiarda degli adulti) is a 2019 novel by Elena Ferrante. It was adapted into a television series of the same name by Edoardo De Angelis in 2023.

In Naples in the early 1990s, twelve-year-old Giovanna Trada overhears her father Andrea disparagingly liken her appearance to that of his estranged sister Vittoria. This sends Giovanna into a search for Vittoria on another side of Naples to discover the nature of the family's fallout.

The novel was first published in Italy in November 2019 by Edizioni e/o, published as part of their Dal Mondo series.^[3] An English translation by Ann Goldstein was scheduled to be published by Europa Editions on 9 June 2020, but was postponed to 1 September 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[4][5][6][7] The English translation debuted at number two on The New York Times fiction best-seller list.^[8]

Upon release, The Lying Life of Adults was generally well-received. According to Book Marks, the book received "positive" reviews based on 51 critic reviews with 22 being "rave" and 23 being "positive" and 4 being "mixed" and 2 being "pan".^[9] In Books in the Media, a site that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received a (4.19 out of 5) from the site which was based on 15 critic reviews.^[10]

In its starred review, Kirkus Reviews praised Goldstein's "fluid" translation and wrote, "Giovanna's nascent sexuality is more frankly explored than that of previous Ferrante protagonists".^[11]

Publishers Weekly called Giovanna a "winning character" but nonetheless wrote that the novel "feels minor in comparison to Ferrante's previous work".^[12]

A review in The New York Times stated that the book "evokes for me all the ordinary, warring paradoxes of intimate life."^[13]

In May 2020, Netflix announced it would be adapting The Lying Life of Adults into a television series of the same name in collaboration with Italy's Fandango production company.^{[14][15][16][17]} The series was released by Netflix in January 2023.^[18]