A young Italian woman tries to gain independence from her family, but walks into tragedy Delia is seventeen and living with her oppressive family. Their small house in a poor Italian village is bursting with three younger brothers and a distant cousin, Nini, who has lived with the family since he was a young boy. An older sister, Azalea, has married and moved away. Delia's parents are unhappy, her mother angry and resentful at her lot in life, and her father largely apathetic. Now that Delia is seventeen, it's her mission to get married and get out. To escapes life's boredom and terrible home life, Delia takes trips to the city. Walking the road to the city with Nini one day she meets a doctor's son, Giulio. He gives her a quail that he'd hunted. He is studying medicine and has prospects. And so Delia and Giulio start up a relationship. It's not a particularly passionate one, more a means to an end. There are roadblocks in the way to marriage, most notably Giulio's mother, who is openly hostile to Delia. The callous way they openly talk about each other is so crass it's almost funny. Things take a turn for the predictable when Delia finds herself pregnant and her mother, in a tough-as-nails piece of negotiation, fronts Giulio's family and secures a respectable marriage. Despite this looming betrothal, Delia has been growing closer and closer to Nini, her distant cousin. Her pregnancy and marriage cause all sorts of turmoil for the pair, leading to tragedy. Natalia Ginzburg's pithy novella The Road to the City is by turns riveting family drama and black comedy. Every page details the emotional twists and turns of a group of young, poor Italians, trying to get ahead in hopeless circumstances. An air of resignation permeates everything, especially for the women who are economically dependent and worked to the bone. Ginzburg is brutally candid about the drudgery of motherhood, painting it almost as a curse. My mother always said children were serpents' teeth and that no one had any business bringing them into the world. Indeed she spent all her days cursing her children, one by one. The scenes in the hospital when Delia has had her baby are almost farcical, as she can't be bothered attending to the infant and dreads going home where the real work of changing nappies and feeding will begin. Such a frank assessment of children and child rearing, determinedly wiping the gloss off the usually sainted image of motherhood, makes this a startlingly modern work of fiction. A short, sharp and satisfyingly honest portrayal of loveless marriage and hated domesticity. The Road to the City, by Natalia Ginzburg. Published by Daunt Books. $19.99 Review by Chris Saliba Comments are closed.
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