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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I love this book. I love Natalia Ginzburg.
Ginzburg is unapologetic in her writing and that is what I love. The pacing is slow and she doesn’t care if you have the time. It’s on you to care, it’s on you to get invested. Ginzburg just tells the story without imposing any way you should feel. I felt like I gave a little bit of myself to this book and I got a little bit of it to carry around with me. The scene setting, the dialogue, the musings about life and death; it’s all so beautiful. No book I have read has been quite so perfectly executed.
I said this about the last Ginzburg book I read but I’ll say it again- no author displays such an excellent and uncompromising understanding of what it means to be human as she does. That, for me, is why she can get away with not coercing the reader to feel a certain way because the feeling is already there as a human being reading about being human.
I am normally left with a thirst for more reading after finishing a book but I desperately do not want to start another book for a while- I want to bathe in what I just read.
Ginzburg is unapologetic in her writing and that is what I love. The pacing is slow and she doesn’t care if you have the time. It’s on you to care, it’s on you to get invested. Ginzburg just tells the story without imposing any way you should feel. I felt like I gave a little bit of myself to this book and I got a little bit of it to carry around with me. The scene setting, the dialogue, the musings about life and death; it’s all so beautiful. No book I have read has been quite so perfectly executed.
I said this about the last Ginzburg book I read but I’ll say it again- no author displays such an excellent and uncompromising understanding of what it means to be human as she does. That, for me, is why she can get away with not coercing the reader to feel a certain way because the feeling is already there as a human being reading about being human.
I am normally left with a thirst for more reading after finishing a book but I desperately do not want to start another book for a while- I want to bathe in what I just read.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
3,5 maybe 4 ?? I need to think about it a little
A good read but I wasn’t the biggest fan of the second part
A good read but I wasn’t the biggest fan of the second part
First published in 1952, Natalia Ginzburg’s All Our Yesterdays is a big-hearted and rambunctious tale chronicling the ups and downs of two Italian families during the Second World War and the events leading up to it.
It’s not an easy book to like — it’s so richly detailed as to be almost impenetrable, not helped by next to no paragraph breaks – but it is wholly immersive once you commit time to it and let the family dynamics and political dramas work their magic.
There’s no central character to steer you through the complexity of lives being lived, first under Fascist rule, then under German occupation, although the blurb on my edition claims it’s Anna, the quiet, teenage daughter of one of the families.
But it could just as easily be Cenzo Rena, the kindly, sociable, well-travelled man more than 30 years her senior, whom she marries to protect her reputation when she falls pregnant to the self-interested boy across the road. (That boy cruelly fobs her off with a 1,000-lire note to arrange an underground abortion, as if that will solve everything.)
Regardless, the narrative offers enough drama and intrigue to keep the reader turning the pages without a main protagonist.
The story is divided into two parts. The first sets the scene and introduces us to a vast cast of characters — two families who live across the street from one another in Northern Italy — and highlights how their secret work to oppose the Fascist regime in the 1930s unites them despite the disparity in their wealth (one family owns a soap factory, the other is headed by a middle-class widower with little disposable income).
The second part focuses more on Anna and Cenzo’s marriage and charts what happens when 16-year-old Anna swaps her familial world for a new life in a new town with a man she barely knows.
This richly drawn novel manages to successfully show how family dynamics and the minutiae of daily life play out against a broader backdrop of political upheaval and uncertainty.
Ginzburg successfully shows how the Italians, confronted with war and its associated violence and food shortages, continued to live their lives as best they could. References to the German advancement across Europe, the fall of Mussolini and the rumours of Jewish persecution are mentioned almost in passing, but for the reader who has the benefit of hindsight, it’s hard not to feel the chilling hand of history.
For a more detailed review, please visit my blog.
It’s not an easy book to like — it’s so richly detailed as to be almost impenetrable, not helped by next to no paragraph breaks – but it is wholly immersive once you commit time to it and let the family dynamics and political dramas work their magic.
There’s no central character to steer you through the complexity of lives being lived, first under Fascist rule, then under German occupation, although the blurb on my edition claims it’s Anna, the quiet, teenage daughter of one of the families.
But it could just as easily be Cenzo Rena, the kindly, sociable, well-travelled man more than 30 years her senior, whom she marries to protect her reputation when she falls pregnant to the self-interested boy across the road. (That boy cruelly fobs her off with a 1,000-lire note to arrange an underground abortion, as if that will solve everything.)
Regardless, the narrative offers enough drama and intrigue to keep the reader turning the pages without a main protagonist.
The story is divided into two parts. The first sets the scene and introduces us to a vast cast of characters — two families who live across the street from one another in Northern Italy — and highlights how their secret work to oppose the Fascist regime in the 1930s unites them despite the disparity in their wealth (one family owns a soap factory, the other is headed by a middle-class widower with little disposable income).
The second part focuses more on Anna and Cenzo’s marriage and charts what happens when 16-year-old Anna swaps her familial world for a new life in a new town with a man she barely knows.
This richly drawn novel manages to successfully show how family dynamics and the minutiae of daily life play out against a broader backdrop of political upheaval and uncertainty.
Ginzburg successfully shows how the Italians, confronted with war and its associated violence and food shortages, continued to live their lives as best they could. References to the German advancement across Europe, the fall of Mussolini and the rumours of Jewish persecution are mentioned almost in passing, but for the reader who has the benefit of hindsight, it’s hard not to feel the chilling hand of history.
For a more detailed review, please visit my blog.