Ferrante

I went back and finished The Lying Life of the Adults.  I don't think it is a good novel. A lot of it hinges on the circulation of a bracelet that was supposedly a gift from the narrator's aunt to her, but ends up being given to other people in a way that is difficult to follow. After a while, I got sick of the damned bracelet as a narrative device. Is there a word for this? Is it Maguffin?  

The narrator accompanies her friend to Milan to visit Roberto, the friend's fiancé. The friend now has the bracelet, but leaves it behind in Roberto's apartment. So the narrator gets back on the train to Milan to fetch it. She is in love with Roberto, so that is the real motive. Roberto offers to sleep with her, but she doesn't. Then, in order to lose her virginity, at age 16, she calls another male friend. There ensues some of the most awkward sex and sex writing conceivable, and then the novel ends. 

Unlike in My Brilliant Friend,, the narrator/protagonist belongs to the Italian-speaking educated part of Naples, so there isn't the idea of escaping the rione. We can see that Roberto is the equivalent of a figure that appears in other Ferrante novels: the young, brilliant, handsome intellectual. 

I will go and read the other novels of the Brilliant Friend tetralogy, but I need a break now while I read something else.