A review by savaging
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg

4.0

This book was recommended by Elena Ferrante, the author of the Neapolitan Novels. Like Ferrante, Ginzburg writes about fascism and war from a perspective that's deeply embedded in everyday family life. She spends more time on the way her mother shops for apples than she does on the details of Mussolini's rise to power. Bombs are dropping and she focuses on the particular gait her father takes as he charges through town ignoring the warnings. It's charming and horrifying. It's deeply personal and also extremely detached, as she slides over her own husband's torture and murder at the hands of Nazis, and instead focuses on the funny little things her friends and family say.