Natalia Ginzburg's classic autobiographical novel of family life during wartime. Ostensibly written as a novel, renowned Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon reads mostly like a comic memoir. Despite there being plenty of hardship and heartache throughout, the tone is kept light as a souffle. Novels usually have some plot, or if no plot, then central characters to focus on, but Family Lexicon has a diffuse feel, jumping from person to person. Ginzburg's father, however, does work as a centrifugal force in the book's narrative, along with mother Lidia, both of whom are eccentrics in their own way. Giuseppe is always thundering his disapproval at this, that and the other, variously describing the idiocies of the world as “doodledums” and “nitwitteries”. Lidia, more sanguine, but zany nonetheless, enjoys art and all things beautiful, passing idiosyncratic comments on the fashions of the day. She is forever youthful, blessed with a lightness of being. Bubbling away behind the broad cast of characters is the looming Second World War. The family is staunchly anti-fascist. They are also of Jewish origins. With the Germans advancing, they are forced to go into hiding. Young Natalia marries resistance organiser Leone Ginzburg, who is tortured and dies in prison, but this fact is remarked upon almost in passing. Through all these tragedies and difficulties, the family ploughs ahead, their same old sense of humour and interpersonal relations intact, seemingly unchanged by war. Perhaps this is one of the novel's central themes: war affects people differently, and life does go on, despite everything. While the narrative does sometimes have a feeling of stasis, surprising considering the dramatic events of Mussolini, fascism and war, Family Lexicon has the comic tone of Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. A humane and generous portrait, but one that captures all the maddening imperfections of family life. Family Lexicon, by Natalia Ginzburg. Published by Daunt Books. $19.99 Review by Chris Saliba Comments are closed.
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