Voices in the Evening

Starred review from March 22, 2021
Ginzburg (Family Lexicon) takes a close look at the effects of fascism on an Italian family in this engrossing novel first published in 1961 and reissued with an introduction by Colm Tóibín, who sheds light on Ginzburg’s interest in her characters’ “competing versions of reality.” The wealthy De Franciscis reside at a rural estate during the years before and immediately after WWII. Patriarch Balotta, a socialist factory owner, is by turns boisterous and withdrawn, while his wife, Cecilia, maintains a close watch of the community’s gossip. The story is told by Elsa, a young woman who has an ill-fated love affair with the De Francisci’s youngest son, Tommasino. Ginzburg (1916–1991) dedicates several chapters to each of the De Francisi children: Gemmina, the oldest, becomes stern and mercurial after her unrequited love interest is killed by a fascist gang; the elder sons, Vincenzino and Mario, spend time as prisoners of war, which costs Mario his life and leads Vincenzino to fall into a loveless marriage; and Raffaella, the youngest daughter, joins the partisans before marrying her ex-fascist cousin. Ginzburg’s efficient, lyrical prose and ear for dialogue make for an expansive and beautifully rendered study of individuals and community in wartime. With this latest resurrected masterpiece, the late author’s work continues to prove irresistible and relevant.

Starred review from April 1, 2021
In the shadow of World War II, a young couple explores their feelings for one another. In this short but very affecting novel, originally published in English in 1963, characters speak of trivialities. "What a fine head of hair he has, at that age!" Elsa's mother tells her as, walking home, they pass a neighbor. "Did you notice how ugly the dog has become?" Neither Elsa's mother nor anyone else in their small Italian village knows that Elsa has fallen in love with Tommasino, the youngest child of Balotta, the old factory owner. The book takes a looser structure than Ginzburg's others. Elsa and Tommasino bookend the story with their affair, but the middle is taken up by an account of Tommasino's siblings and their spouses: Purillo, the adopted cousin who takes over their father's factory; long-faced Gemmina; dreamy Vincenzino; and Mario, who marries Xenia, a Russian who speaks French but no Italian and so cannot converse with anyone in the village. What all these lives have to do with one another doesn't become clear until the end. What is clear is that there is a darker current running beneath all the trivialities. During the war, Purillo sympathized with the fascists, an affectation for which the others mocked him. Nebbia, a friend, was killed behind the house. "I have the feeling," Tommasino tells Elsa near the end, "that they have already lived enough, those others before me; that they have already consumed all the reserves, all the vitality that there was for us....Nothing was left over for me." Rarely does Ginzburg directly address politics--fascism, in particular--but its shadow hangs over the book just like it hangs over the characters. The result is profound and profoundly moving. As deceptively diffuse as it is meticulously observed, Ginzburg's novel is a gem.

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