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A review by marc129
All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg
2.0
Life's but a walking shadow
Natalia Ginzburg presents a chronicle of two families living opposite each other, in a northern Italian town, one slightly impoverished, the other rich. It's the 1930s, the fascists of Mussolini are in power, a new war is casting its shadow, but Ginzburg focuses almost entirely on the banal vicissitudes of four youngsters from those families (with a few secondary figures next to them). She does this in a dry, detached style that merely records. Fathers die, the children go to school or start working in the factory (as laborers or as directors), they have friendships and successful or unsuccessful relationships: it is all told without emotion. Politics and the international situation certainly are present, but in the background.
It is only around the middle of the novel that the story starts to gain momentum, not coincidentally when the war really breaks out and the protagonists are pulled along. But even now the style remains sober and business-like, in a continuous stream of relatively short sentences, descriptive, without dialogues, and again with subdued emotion; not even when really dramatic things happen towards the end of the war. The main characters just undergo what is happening, barely understand what is going on, have no control over their lives.
I'm going to be honest: already after 30 pages I had the urge to close this book. The writing style and the lack of an intriguing story did not really encourage reading. But I persevered, and only after about 150 pages this novel began to speak. Not spectacularly, of course not, but still. This is strange: Ginzburg has ventured an experiment with only antiheroes, a family chronicle without passion or fireworks. It was only after some searching that I found the key: at the beginning, Ginzburg posted a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, beginning with the words "and all our yesterdays", which refers to the title of this book. Curiously, it are the very cynical lines that follow this citation, and which she does not mention, that perfectly convey the meaning of this novel:
“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
When you read this novel from that light, the endless, consecutive sentences begin to speak deafeningly. So, in the end I was captivated, but I can’t say it was a top read.
(rating 2.5 stars)
Natalia Ginzburg presents a chronicle of two families living opposite each other, in a northern Italian town, one slightly impoverished, the other rich. It's the 1930s, the fascists of Mussolini are in power, a new war is casting its shadow, but Ginzburg focuses almost entirely on the banal vicissitudes of four youngsters from those families (with a few secondary figures next to them). She does this in a dry, detached style that merely records. Fathers die, the children go to school or start working in the factory (as laborers or as directors), they have friendships and successful or unsuccessful relationships: it is all told without emotion. Politics and the international situation certainly are present, but in the background.
It is only around the middle of the novel that the story starts to gain momentum, not coincidentally when the war really breaks out and the protagonists are pulled along. But even now the style remains sober and business-like, in a continuous stream of relatively short sentences, descriptive, without dialogues, and again with subdued emotion; not even when really dramatic things happen towards the end of the war. The main characters just undergo what is happening, barely understand what is going on, have no control over their lives.
I'm going to be honest: already after 30 pages I had the urge to close this book. The writing style and the lack of an intriguing story did not really encourage reading. But I persevered, and only after about 150 pages this novel began to speak. Not spectacularly, of course not, but still. This is strange: Ginzburg has ventured an experiment with only antiheroes, a family chronicle without passion or fireworks. It was only after some searching that I found the key: at the beginning, Ginzburg posted a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, beginning with the words "and all our yesterdays", which refers to the title of this book. Curiously, it are the very cynical lines that follow this citation, and which she does not mention, that perfectly convey the meaning of this novel:
“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
When you read this novel from that light, the endless, consecutive sentences begin to speak deafeningly. So, in the end I was captivated, but I can’t say it was a top read.
(rating 2.5 stars)