The Lying Life of Adults

Giovanna Trada, a 13-year-old girl from Naples, Italy, overhears a whispered conversation between her parents, Andrea and Nella, in which her father likens Giovanna’s features to those of his sister, Aunt Vittoria. This comparison shocks Giovanna for two reasons: Her father maintains that Giovanna is pretty, yet he insists that his combative sister is a shadowy presence “in whom ugliness and spite were combined to perfection” (14). Though Giovanna can’t recall her aunt’s appearance, she does know that her parents both despise and avoid the aunt. The comparison therefore confuses and terrifies Giovanna, but it also ignites a desire to learn more about Aunt Vittoria. If she can just see her aunt’s face, Giovanna reasons, she can gain closure regarding her father’s hurtful words.

Before overhearing the whispered conversation, Giovanna lived a privileged, peaceful life with her parents. They reside in the higher, wealthier part of Naples called Rione Alto, a sharp contrast from the lower, working-class Naples known as the Industrial Zone in which Aunt Vittoria and the rest of the family lives. Giovanna spent her days wearing beautiful dresses, having fun with her friends Ida and Angela, who are siblings, and listening to her intellectual father hold court with his best friend Mariano (Ida and Angela’s father) and other friends during fiery debates about politics. Now, however, Giovanna’s grades begin to suffer, and her mood becomes sullen. She’s unable to rebound from what she perceives as her father’s betrayal. Aunt Vittoria is synonymous with evil, so Giovanna wonders if her entry into adolescence—already marked by menstruation, changing features, and sexual urges—angers her father because he long ago saw some evil within Giovanna that he feared adolescence would fully unleash.

When Giovanna’s parents, teachers, and friends begin commenting on her sulky demeanor, and after days of crying and studying her self-named “ugliness” in the mirror, Giovanna searches for pictures of Aunt Vittoria in her parents’ room. After discovering that her father has scratched out Aunt Vittoria’s face from his photos, Giovanna is more determined than ever to see what Aunt Vittoria looks like.

Angela and Ida give Giovanna a boon one day when they admit that they too look ugly when they’re anxious. Giovanna, taking their admission to heart, reasons that her father will once again think she’s pretty if she doesn’t give in to anxiousness. Yet her developing body depresses her, and she can’t shake what she interprets as her parents’ disgust with her changing personality. Even the usual dinner night with friends, where Mariano’s beautiful, wealthy wife, Costanza, a regal woman adored by both Giovanna and her mother, does nothing to liven up Giovanna’s mood. Giovanna later tries a different tactic by asking her mother to teach her how to apply makeup. While spending this mother-daughter bonding time together, Giovanna’s mother casually asks if Giovanna was looking for a photo of Aunt Vittoria when snooping around in their room.

Though Giovanna fears her parents are mad at her, her mother affirms the opposite. They don’t mind Giovanna looking at photos, or even going through their things if she asks. Giovanna, crying, realizes that her parents have known for some time that she overheard their conversation and that her mother, the parent with the soothing, judgement-free voice, is trying to rectify the situation. Giovanna’s mother lectures her about how their lives were once an uphill battle: Aunt Vittoria features in much of this struggle and still does.

Aunt Vittoria has always been envious of her brother’s success and wants nothing more than to destroy everything for which Giovanna’s parents have worked. The aunt wants to lower her brother to her own station in life. She wants him to suffer because, in the past, Aunt Vittoria had an affair with a married cop who had a family and Giovanna’s father intervened to stop the affair. Aunt Vittoria has never forgiven him, and she turned the rest of the family against her brother. As Giovanna learns more about her aunt, she feels even angrier because her father likened her to someone who wants him dead or ruined. Her mother, noticing her sour mood, admits that, “for us, for a long time, Aunt Vittoria has been not a person but a locution” (34): Giovanna’s parents jokingly scold one another in private about their sour behavior, suggesting that their demeanor will, like Aunt Vittoria, bring about ruin. Giovanna is hardly consoled, however, and when she tells her mother that she must meet Aunt Vittoria to feel better, her mother instructs Giovanna to speak to her father about it.

Giovanna doesn’t initially believe that she’ll have to speak directly to her father, imagining instead that her mother will arrange things and that her father will agree without question. When he doesn’t engage Giovanna on the subject, the feeling of betrayal grows. Giovanna brings the matter up to her mother again and, when her mother suggests that she must first learn how to navigate the dangerous Neapolitan streets with an atlas so that she can visit Aunt Vittoria alone, Giovanna interprets her mother’s gesture as patronizing—especially when her mother asks her to leave the room without giving Giovanna the atlas to conduct research. With this perceived slight, Giovanna earmarks her mistrust of her parents and their newfound privacy as “the end of my childhood” (38), though she also admits that she might be imagining the gap she feels growing between them.

Determined to connect to Aunt Vittoria without her parents’ help, Giovanna locates her aunt’s number in her father’s address book. When she calls and encounters an extremely rude Aunt Vittoria, however, Giovanna hangs up in fear. At that very moment, her father comes home. He notices that the address book is not only open but turned to the “T” section (Vittoria Trada), then he quietly goes to his room and speaks with his wife. When he returns, he tells a crying Giovanna that he will drive her to his sister’s apartment on Sunday and that she can visit for as long as she wants. He doesn’t want to facilitate the visit, and he warns Giovanna that Aunt Vittoria will try and use Giovanna to hurt him. Despite all this, he wants Giovanna to be happy. Giovanna hugs him, and though she normally feels comfort and security in her father’s embrace, she smells a foreign scent on him that suggests she is becoming estranged from her father. This new feeling of estrangement surprises—and pleases—Giovanna.

As the meeting with Aunt Vittoria draws near, Giovanna develops cold feet. She even asks her mother to cancel the appointment, but her mother warns her that things are already set in motion. When Sunday arrives, Giovanna’s father appears agitated. He drives her down into the Industrial Zone while explaining his family’s origins in poverty-stricken Pascone. Giovanna is hesitant to leave the car, especially as she takes in the dilapidated building Aunt Vittoria lives in and the poor neighborhood surrounding the building. Later, when Aunt Vittoria opens the door, Giovanna encounters a rude, frightful woman who cusses in dialect and threatens Giovanna. Despite her aunt’s crudeness, Giovanna thinks her aunt is so beautiful that she must force herself to think of Aunt Vittoria as ugly.