VOICES IN THE EVENING by Natalia Ginzburg

Translated by D.M. Low

In an era of increasingly flash-in-the-pan books and authors, it’s great to see the continued resurgence in interest for Natalia Ginzburg. Born into the first World War and coming of age in the second, Ginzburg was almost uniquely positioned to pick over the ashes of post-war European society. Her father was Jewish, her mother Catholic. Ginzburg was raised an avowed atheist. Her husband was arrested and murdered by the Italian Fascists. All of these things loom large in her extraordinary oeuevre of memoir, essay, reportage and fiction.

First published in 1961, Voices In The Evening is an early and delightfully peculiar book, rather unlike anything else Ginzburg wrote. Told in vignettes of what essentially amounts to gossip, it recounts the loves, pretty conflicts, political upheavals and social storms among the residents of a small Italian town during and in the immediate aftermath of WW2. Mostly observed by Elsa, a 27-year-old single woman who lives with her parents, it’s funny, casually conversational, and deeply insightful. There’s a lot that happens off the page, too, and it’s quite the treat trying to piece the whole thing together.

Admittedly, there’s better Ginzburg, but her minor books still outshine most writers’ best.

Voices In the Evening by Natalia Ginzburg (Tr. D.M. Low)
Daunt Books, 2019
157 pages