Customer Reviews

The City and the House

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If you read anything by Natalia Ginzburg, read this gorgeous novel set in various houses and flats around Rome, Italy and New Jersey. The story is told in letters, but Ginzburg's characters are not emotionally-confined as one might expect with this genre. This novel examines love and its duration, across years of friendship and parenting.

The story's told entirely in the form of letters between the main characters, most of whom know each other well: Giuseppe, a middle-aged widower; Lucrezia, formerly his lover, who's married to Piero; their friends Serina, Albina and Egisto; Giuseppe's son, Alberico, and cousin, Roberta. The main characters live in and around Rome and Perugia, and for years most of them have spent weekends at Lucrezia and Piero's country home in the region. The book begins with Giuseppe's decision to leave the friendship of their little group and go abroad to live with his brother. Over time, this and other events lead to the group's dispersal, as the members move on with their lives.

The characters writing to each other are concerned entirely with close personal relations: their families, lovers, friends. In the course of the book, they talk, bicker, reveal themselves. They express affection for each other, describe their problems, disagree with and reprove one another. They react to what the other has written, sometimes with disappointment, they tell their correspondent how they feel about a third person they both know. They talk to a third person and then tell each other what they said. They change their minds about their actions and feelings. They gather new friends and relationships, and try to recreate elsewhere the intimacy they enjoyed with each other.

No matter what, most of them keep talking. Sometimes this is tiring, but it's also moving, and I couldn't stop reading for long. The urge to communicate, continue something, keep caring for each other despite petty problems and larger troubles, was very natural, very human. As time passed, mainly what was left to them were memories of their happiest times together. Their shifting feelings felt true to life.

I was impressed by the main characters' levelheadedness and civility, by their matter-of-fact approach to problems such as lack of understanding, infidelity, separation, divorce and so on. The violent emotions and scenes took place off stage, so to speak.

For me, the two fundamental relationships in the book were between Giuseppe and Lucrezia, who cared for each other very much despite lingering dissatisfactions, and Giuseppe and his son, who were among the few correspondents who drew closer to each other over time. By the book's end, one of these relationships had ended with finality, while there was a chance the other might continue, though the people involved couldn't return to what they'd had before.

Because the book was written completely in the form of letters, what was done, thought and felt was reported by each writer separately on the page. The lack of omniscient narration, for me, gave the novel something of a flat tone. Toward the end, there were a few too many dramatic and untimely events, and this felt forced. Then the book concluded, without full resolution. Maybe this too was true to life, but it was unexpected and disappointing. Still, it was worthwhile reading this book, seeing the author's approach to her characters, and getting to know them.