Point of View

The Lying Life of Adults is written from Giovanna's first person point of view. As a teenager, Giovanna is prone to exaggerated emotional feeling. Giovanna's coming-of-age concerns about her appearance, her lack of character, her friendships and romantic infatuations, consume the narrative. Though Giovanna learns an affinity for lying to her parents and friends, she reveals the full truth of her emotional and existential concerns to the reader, thus establishing an intimate relationship between audience and narrator. At the start of Part II, for example, Giovanna overtly admits that she "learned to lie to [her] parents more and more" (49). Her narration, therefore, does not appear unreliable, as Giovanna is willing to confess her manipulations, trespasses, and betrayals to no one else besides the reader. Though she disguises the truth of her hurts and desires from those around her, her narrative expression provides her a seeming...