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zach_l 's review for:
Family Lexicon
by Natalia Ginzburg
3 stars. A tale of one family in Italy in the years leading up to World War 2, including the rise of Mussolini, and the immediate aftermath. The afterward describes this book as "an eccentric family chronicle, not a historical document" and I think this description sums it up nicely. You meet lots of truly unique, quirky, and sometimes frightening family members whose regular nonsense becomes a source of genuine comedy. But you do get very short-changed on life during the war, a time when the family was clearly struggling but you get only crumbs in the way of their experience. This (likely deliberate) omission is a shame as it was the part of the book I was most looking forward to (most books on the lead up to World War 2 seem to be set in Germany/France/England).
A short, enjoyable, but not fully satisfying book. I had never heard of Natalia Ginzburg before reading this work, but I have no doubt her celebrity among "those in the know" is well deserved.
A short, enjoyable, but not fully satisfying book. I had never heard of Natalia Ginzburg before reading this work, but I have no doubt her celebrity among "those in the know" is well deserved.