'Family Lexicon' by Natalia Ginzburg
'Family Lexicon' by Natalia Ginzburg
'Soon no one was left who could pretend it wasn't happening, who could close their eyes, plug their ears, and hide their heads under a pillow; those people were all gone.'— Review #146
Hope you are all enjoying the end of this historic weekend. Now that we can finally exhale with the election over, it’s time to turn our attention to our next great national challenge: the holidays, and spending time with family. Natalia Ginzurg’s remarkable book is perfect preparation for the coming season. Here’s the cover:
If you enjoy this review, click the ♥️ above. New here?
‘Family Lexicon’ tells the story of Ginzburg’s parents, siblings and the various people in their orbit—friends, spouses, co-workers, maids and political exiles—living in Italy before, during and after World War II. In the preface, Ginzburg says the ‘places, events, and people in this book are real,’ but that she also thinks a reader ‘should read it as though it were a novel, and therefore not demand of it any more or less than a novel can offer.’ But I’ve never read a novel like this. There’s not much plot, but the story advances through Ginzburg’s recollections of scenes that highlight the words and phrases used by family and friends over and over. These idiomatic expressions make sense only to those in the family or their immediate circle, and outsiders would be like:
For example, Ginzburg’s grumpy and belligerent father, Beppino, is always bemoaning ‘nitwits’ and their stupid acts, or ‘nitwitteries.’ Ginzburg’s mother loves to chitchat, and gets frustrated when someone doesn’t ‘lend their gear,’ which means to lend an ear or to discuss one’s problems. These phrases help the reader remember who’s who, and allow access to their interior lives. Learning their secret language makes the book feel like flipping through a family photo album brought to life; not one full of strangers, but one full of characters you feel already connected to. You can almost see Beppino yelling at all the nitwits around him, or storming off on a hike in the mountains near their home in Turin. Or Ginzburg’s sister-in-law Miranda, who’s always cold, sitting in her chair wrapped in blankets and fortified with hot water bottles. Or Lola, Ginzburg’s friend and co-worker at a publishing house, who has a face so sharp it seems to cut through the air as she walks. These and others’ idiosyncrasies are written in the same punchy and direct style that I enjoyed last year when I reviewed Ginzburg’s novella ‘The Dry Heart,’ but might take some time for new readers to get used to. Though she doesn’t always paint a flattering portrait of her relations (her father is abusive and quasi racist), you feel the undercurrent of love she feels for them, like:
She would rely on that love to carry her through the war years, first when she and her husband were exiled to Abruzzi, and later after her husband was arrested and murdered by Nazis for running an underground newspaper in Rome. In Peg Boyers’ afterword, we learn that Ginzburg wrote this book while she was living in England with her second husband, who was sent there to serve in a diplomatic post. She was lonely and often thought of these memories to comfort her. I thought about how each of us has a book like this inside of us, full of memories of people we’ve met, loved and lost along the way. I thought about the approaching holiday season, and how that time can evoke memories that renew us or make us feel like:
When I feel that way, I think of one of my family’s phrases: ‘Must do is a fine fellow.’ I’m not sure where it comes from, but we’ve been saying it forever. I think I even used it as a yearbook quote once. To us, a family of stoics, it means something like ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going,’ combined with ‘the only way out is through’ plus a dash of ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’ Whenever times are tough we say it to acknowledge that what comes next may be difficult, but also that there might be an opportunity for growth. I’ll be thinking about that phrase a lot over these next few weeks to push through a holiday season filled with pandemic difficulties and political fallout. What phrases do you share with family and friends? Put it in the comments:
‘Family Lexicon’ was a welcome respite from election distractions, and I loved it. I urge you all to read this book.
How it begins:
At the dinner table in my father’s home when I was a girl if I, or one of my siblings, knocked a glass over on the tablecloth or dropped a knife, my father’s voice would thunder, “Watch your manners!”
If we used our bread to mop up pasta sauce, he yelled, “Don’t lick your plates. Don’t dribble! Don’t slobber!”
For my father dribble and slobber also described modern painting, which he couldn’t stand.
He would say, “You have no idea how to behave at the table! I can’t take you lot anywhere.”
And he said, “Any table d’hôte in England would quickly show you slobs to the door.”
He had the greatest respect for England and believed that civility had found there, more than anywhere else in the world, its greatest expression.
At dinner he’d comment on the people he’d encountered during the day. He was very harsh in his judgments and thought everyone was stupid. For him someone stupid was a “nitwit.”
“He struck me as a real nitwit,” he would say about some new acquaintance.
My rating:
‘Family Lexicon’ (Lessico famigliare) was originally published in the Italian by Giulio Einaudi Editore in 1963. It was translated into English by Jenny McPhee and published by The New York Review of Books in 2017. 221 pages, including notes and an afterword by Peg Boyers. $15.59 on Bookshop.org.
Disagree with my review? Let me know:
Up next:
Review #145: ‘Passing’ by Nella Larsen
Support BoG: Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads
Contact me: booksongif@gmail.com.
Before you go:
Do this: Prairie Lights bookstore in Iowa City is hosting a virtual event with poets and ‘longtime pals’ Ada Limón and Jennifer L. Knox. They will read some of their work and have a conversation moderated by Grinnell College professor Dean Bakopoulos over Zoom on Nov. 10 at 7 p.m. Central Time. Click here for more information.
Thanks for reading, and thanks especially to Donna for editing this newsletter!
Until next time,
MPV
Review #146 used GIFs from Giphy.com.
Books on GIF newsletters with most ♥️s
My dad and his parents and sibling relentlessly described everyone as “nitwits” — I need to read this book. And I am going to start using the phrase “nitwitteries.” And I really like your family’s “must do is a fine fellow” and will be borrowing it.
Families should come with glossaries, shouldn’t they? So outsiders can understand their specific language. When we were making plans to socialize with other people, my parents would sometimes respond, “We are max flex.” Which meant we had maximum flexibility, as in, we could do any social engagement at any time. But in later years, upon reflection, I started to realize that perhaps another meaning was, ‘We aren’t that organized and don’t like to be pinned down, so let’s keep our options open.’ But maybe not. Who can say what the meaning of a family phrase is? I like hearing about other people's family phrases. It gives you a little window in.