Volume 32, Number 17 · November 7, 1985

The Force of Habit

By Gabriele Annan
All Our Yesterdays
by Natalia Ginzburg, translated by Angus Davidson

Carcanet, 300 pp., $14.95

Family Sayings
by Natalia Ginzburg, translated by D.M. Low

Carcanet, 181 pp., $14.95

The Little Virtues
by Natalia Ginzburg, translated by Dick Davis

Carcanet, 110 pp., $14.95

During the past year Carcanet Press has reprinted two of Natalia Ginzburg's novels. All Our Yesterdays first appeared in Italian in 1952 and in English in 1956. Family Sayings was published in Italy in 1963 and in translation in 1967. Now comes The Little Virtues, a collection of essays written between 1944 and 1962. It makes a useful gloss to the novels which, for all their sober realism, are somewhat inscrutable in intention, written through clenched teeth, as it were, giving away as little as possible. Ginzburg is the least garrulous of writers.



Review, 2667 words

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