Why is it, wonders a character in Elena Ferrante’s new novel, “The Lying Life of Adults,” that when talking about sex, one adjective will never suffice? “Why does it take many — embarrassing, bland, tragic, happy, pleasant, repulsive — and never one at a time but all together?”

I can think of one word copious enough. The name Ferrante — the pseudonym of the Italian novelist — evokes for me all the ordinary, warring paradoxes of intimate life. It is shorthand for the tangle of impulses that drive her heroines, mothers and daughters torn between mutual dependence and contempt, their desires to devour and abandon each other, their instincts to nourish and betray.