Four Novellas

by Natalia Ginzburg

A collection of four short novels - "Valentino", "Sagittarius", "Family", and "Borghesia", which have as their common theme the family. The author explores the strengths, tensions and treacheries which occur in families.

245 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 1990

About the author

Natalia Ginzburg (née Levi) was an Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, for which she received the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize. Most of her works were also translated into English and published in the United Kingdom and United States. An activist, for a time in the 1930s she belonged to the Italian Communist Party. In 1983 she was elected to Parliament from Rome as an Independent.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

I have watched La Dolce Vita at least twice, and I have never noticed a servant in it, but these four stories by Ginzburg are thick with servants; elderly, incapable, adulterous, lazy, and perpetual, and there I was thinking that 'the servant problem' was peculiar to British fiction of the inter-war period, no for it lives on even in the Italy of the nineteen sixties.

There are four short stories in this collection: Valentino, Sagittarius, Family, and Borghesia. The first two were published in 1964, the second two in 1977. Peculiarly this edition preserves that distinction, so the pagination runs from page one to one hundred and thirty four, then starts again at page one and goes on to page one hundred and eleven for the second pair of stories. Several of the stories have twists or revelations, so I will attempt to refrain from mentioning plot details too much (though it is safe to say that the stories do involve servants).

This is a genteel world of families, sometimes relying on the income or work the two are not are always relatedof one person to keep the family (and its servants) living in the bourgeois manner to which they are accustomed.

The narrator in the first two stories is a young woman, while the latter two stories have an omniscient narrator instead. The stories are some times funny, sometimes they tug on the heart or other nearby organs, you could with irony read them and then exclaim 'la dolce vita'.

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valentino - 4.5
Sagittarius - 5
Family - 3
Borghesia - 3.5

The obsession with Ginzburg continues. I can see why Saggitarius and Valentino were previously published together: the two are more alike in length, tone, and themes than the latter two, and better reflect Ginzburg at her height. But Sagittarius dealt the hardest blow.