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A review by frazzle
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg
3.0
Completely by chance, I've managed to read about 4 memoirs on the trot and I think it's time to move on from this genre.
This one is a memoir of the esteemed author's growing up and taking leave of her parents in 1930's/40's Italy. Based around things Natalia can remember her family saying, small ticks, habits, foibles, this book builds a picture of a family that could only have been written by one of its own.
There are some really beautiful and loving observations in this book, reflecting the huge amount of time Ginzburg has spent with these people, both physically and in her mind. On the other hand it lacked a narrative arc, and (by its nature I suppose) it was bitty and disjointed. Very rarely is there an exchange beyond two sentences, and more often than not Ginzburg simply recounts a single maxim or expostulation. This made the characters seem to be always talking past each other, billiard balls bouncing around the big table of Western Europe and never really being in relation together.
I was a little lost during the first half. There was vanishingly little reference to Natalia herself, how she fitted into the scenarios she was relating, what she said and what was said to her. The first person voice picked up in the second half. But even then we are given very little insight into what she was thinking/feeling. For example, her account of her marriage is as follows: 'I got married.' Likewise the death of her first husband and others close to her are narrated with an almost cool distance that I found curious, and which can only have been intentional.
Conversely, the portraits she paints of her family members are clearly stamped with her own mark. She makes no apology for depicting people exactly as she remembers them. People are caricatured, whether it's her father's comic irascibility about everything and calling everyone a 'jackass', or her mother's endless fussing over her little ones.
I guess my questions for all the memoirs I've read recently are: what is the position commanded by the memoirist, the job they are hoping to do, the job that is in fact done, whom they are writing for, and what they feel is owed to those they're remembering.
This one is a memoir of the esteemed author's growing up and taking leave of her parents in 1930's/40's Italy. Based around things Natalia can remember her family saying, small ticks, habits, foibles, this book builds a picture of a family that could only have been written by one of its own.
There are some really beautiful and loving observations in this book, reflecting the huge amount of time Ginzburg has spent with these people, both physically and in her mind. On the other hand it lacked a narrative arc, and (by its nature I suppose) it was bitty and disjointed. Very rarely is there an exchange beyond two sentences, and more often than not Ginzburg simply recounts a single maxim or expostulation. This made the characters seem to be always talking past each other, billiard balls bouncing around the big table of Western Europe and never really being in relation together.
I was a little lost during the first half. There was vanishingly little reference to Natalia herself, how she fitted into the scenarios she was relating, what she said and what was said to her. The first person voice picked up in the second half. But even then we are given very little insight into what she was thinking/feeling. For example, her account of her marriage is as follows: 'I got married.' Likewise the death of her first husband and others close to her are narrated with an almost cool distance that I found curious, and which can only have been intentional.
Conversely, the portraits she paints of her family members are clearly stamped with her own mark. She makes no apology for depicting people exactly as she remembers them. People are caricatured, whether it's her father's comic irascibility about everything and calling everyone a 'jackass', or her mother's endless fussing over her little ones.
I guess my questions for all the memoirs I've read recently are: what is the position commanded by the memoirist, the job they are hoping to do, the job that is in fact done, whom they are writing for, and what they feel is owed to those they're remembering.