Descrizione
Price: 13,15€
(as of Sep 13, 2024 10:20:55 UTC – Details)
A captivating rediscovered Italian classic: the moving story of a woman’s slow rebellion against her bourgeois family life
‘A wrenching, sardonic depiction of a woman caught in a social trap’ Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Out running an errand, Valeria Cossati gives in to a sudden impulse – she buys a shiny black notebook. She starts keeping a diary in secret, recording her concerns about her daughter, fears her husband will discover her new habit and the constant churn of the domestic routine. With each entry Valeria plunges deeper into her interior life, uncovering profound dissatisfaction and restlessness. As she finds her own voice, the roles that have come to define her-as wife, as mother, as daughter-begin to break apart.
Forbidden Notebook is a rediscovered jewel of Italian literature, published here in a new translation by the celebrated Ann Goldstein and with a foreword by Jhumpa Lahiri. A captivating feminist classic, it is an intimate, haunting story of domestic discontent in postwar Rome, and of one woman’s awakening to her true thoughts and desires.
ASIN : B0BPKQ7CP1
Editore : Pushkin Press (2 marzo 2023)
Lingua : Inglese
Dimensioni file : 893 KB
Da testo a voce : Abilitato
Screen Reader : Supportato
Miglioramenti tipografici : Abilitato
X-Ray : Non abilitato
Word Wise : Abilitato
Memo : Su Kindle Scribe
Lunghezza disegno : 277 pagine
Bonbonka –
One of the best reads of 2023.
Snapdragon –
Itâs 1950, Rome, and Valeria is keeping a secret diary that sheâs terrified her husband and grown children might find in their small apartment. They would ask her what she could possibly have to write about because sheâs run ragged keeping house and working an office job. Sheâs writing to understand herself and others and it might not make for comfortable reading. As time goes on, she realises that she belongs to an in between generation. She started out accepting the conventional mores of her motherâs generation, but challenged by her daughter Mirella, finds herself doing and thinking things she would have thought impossible earlier. These days we would back Mirella all the way, so this is a useful window into disquieting times. Although she accepts her husbandâs hegemony and thinks of herself as happily married (at least at first), the casual put downs, the complete ignoring of what itâs like to be Valeria, annoyed me like crazy. It was somewhat reminiscent of Fay Weldonâs early stories. Of course, sheâs dealing with a very Roman Catholic idea of how the good and righteous woman conducts herself.That said, although this is a universal theme (or should be), the way people react and speak to each other is particularly Italian and sometimes surprising to an Anglo-Celt. However, by writing the familyâs life, a finely nuanced portrait emerges. I wonât spoil the ending, but her self-abnegating heroism is unspeakably sad. This is a master class in doing a lot with apparently quotidian details.
C J –
A wife and mother. But what about her?
Pauline Butcher Bird –
Rarely do I struggle to review a novel as I do with this one because I didn’t understand so much. From the moment Valeria was not allowed to buy the notebook and the shopkeeper smuggled it into her bag – why was that? – to Valeria’s cruel behaviour toward her daughter – uncalled for. And what about constant references to another war – what war? And how could Valeria write in such a tiny apartment at night and not be discovered? What I did find convincing was the way the desires of mother, father and son are thwarted – her own budding love affair, her husband’s ambition to be a film writer, and their son’s eyes on South America. Only Valeria’s daughter rises above setbacks to train as a lawyer, though how that could happen in late 1940s is a mystery.