Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg

Italian fiction

Original title – Valentino

Translator – Avril Bardoni

Source – Personal copy

Well, I had intended to post a Czech book today, but do you ever have that situation where you read a book and want to straight away read it again well I had that yesterday. I usually have a coffee and sit and read an hour before work after dropping Amanda off at work. Yesterday I decided to take this having just written up the books I got from Holiday and I felt this was a perfect choice at 60 pages there was a good chance I would finish it in one sitting. I have read The Little Virtues and Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg before so I pick this uo when I was away and was just blown away by it.

My sister had never believed that Valentino was destined to become a man of consequence. She couldn’t stand him and pulled a face every time his name was mentioned, remembering all the money my father spent on his education while she was forced to type addresses. Because of this, my mother had never told her about the skiing outfit and whenever my sister came to our house one of us had to rush to his room and make sure that these clothes and any other new things that he had bought for himself were out of sight.

Early on she reveals her sisters view on her brother.

The book follows a number of years in a poor middle-class family we have Caterina one of the sisters to Valentino he is the apple of the eye of the family his mother and father have saved to get him an education as a doctor. His father had been a schoolteacher; later, this is also the job Caterina and the mother help out with piano lessons. So when he is treasured by his parents, but as his sister describes him he is maybe a little lazy at his studies Valentino announces out of the blue he has a fiancé and they are marrying the family thinks he will turn up with some Beauty also when this plain older woman with her tortoiseshell glasses turn upon the family don’t know what to do. They say the father’s heart is weak so Mother talks to them as they wonder why Valentino has picked Maddalena as his wife she has land and money but she is so different to who they pictured their precious son marrying. They do marry and the book then goes forward through the years and have children then a cousin of Maddalean turns up Kit a tall balding man who captures the eye of our narrator but will the couple stick together what is going on between Kit and Valentino.

‘He’s gone home to bed. Here are your gloves,’ I said and tossed them to him. ‘But aren’t you a bit past Mysteries of the Black Jungle?’
‘Stop talking like a schoolmistress,” he replied.
‘I am a schoolmistress,’ I said.
‘I know; but you needn’t talk like one to me?’ My supper had been left on a side table in the sitting room and I sat down to eat. Valentino went on reading.
When I had finished my meal I sat on the settee next to him. I put my hand on his head. He frowned and muttered something under his breath without raising his eyes from the book.

I laughed when he said the schoolmistress line to his sister.

This is a lifetime in 60 pages the course of a marriage the dreams of one generation to the next one. They want Valentino as the father says to be a man of consequence but he is far from that  This is all told in a dry tone by the narrator and there is a sense she knows her brother isn’t as great as the parents feel he is or could be. It is also about class and the difference between Maddalena, her cousin Kit, and the in-laws. Such as when they marry straight away to replace the furniture in the lounge. The book sees the parents die rather quickly after one another. The other sister struggles with her children and our narrator the spinster sister. I loved this slice of a family’s life. Caterina then lives with her brother after the los of her parents and there is a line where Valentino turns to her and says you sound like a schoolteacher she says I am a schoolteacher reminds me of my own gran who was a headmistress. it is fair to say I will be getting the other Ginzburg from Daunt books or seeing if my library has any. But for Italian fiction, my best book is  NYRB classics that Ginzburg rated Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morrante is an epic book. Have you read books by Ginzburg or Morrante?

Winston score – A small gem of a book seems much more than its slim size.