The City and the House by Natalia Ginzburg

In the first twenty pages two apartments are sold. Real estate transactions are never simple changes of ownership. Roberta asks Giuseppe: “What will you do if one fine day you decide to come back?” Giuseppe is not alone in his blunder. Ask Lear.

Quintessential Ginzburg, stories told slantingly: Lucrezia narrates her life—births, deaths, affairs, breakups—dryly in a letter to Giuseppe. From Albina’s letter we learn that Lucrezia locks herself in her room to write him, not taking care of her children’s meal.

“At a certain point in our lives everything we see for the first time is external to us.”
Is being a permanent tourist so intolerable a fate? Perhaps so, though there must be something intolerable in every role for Giuseppe, whose ego is like an oversized, unhatchable egg.

“She had a baby girl and her mother died. She separated from her husband who killed himself a short time afterwards.”
Death is always a swift occurrence in Ginzburg’s narrative. There is no drama, the ripples are barely visible on the surface...

“Since I have been here she had never made a meat-loaf but I’m sure that if she did make one it wouldn’t fall apart.”
A minor hell is where a person is forever remembered by her failed meat-loaf. Poor Lucrezia. Only Piero so far praises and believes in the meatloaf.

“He went to America in order to hide himself away under his brother’s wings. But brothers don’t have wings.”
Clear-eyed Albina! Lucrezia seeks Giuseppe's protection in her love affair with him. Albina, once in love with Giuseppe too, has no such illusion.

“The best time for me is in my office…and I see the sunset over the rooftops, through the window, and then the greyness of the dusk, and then darkness.”
Piero’s understated loneliness: like a rehearsal of the end of a marriage or even death, every evening.

Giuseppe to Lucrezia: “Real friendship does not scratch and bite, and your letter scratched and bit me.” The affair between them is over, but their letters, full of love entangled with discontentment, are the most passionate and wounding words in the novel.

Roberta, writing about Alberico: “He always seems like somebody who has just walked for miles and miles.” Roberta is really a solace. She sees the homelessness and rootlessness of Alberico better than anyone else.

Ignazio Fegiz to Roberta: “He said that perhaps, in a certain sense, I could be said to be right.” Roberta calls I.F. “as closed as an oyster.” And when he speaks of the truth, his words are as slippery as oyster, too.

Roberta writing about Ignazio Fegiz: “He’s one of those people it’s impossible to hate when you actually see them.”Seeing is believing. Can't decide if Roberta is generous, or one's disbelief comes from not seeing I.F but only reading about him.

“Long, beautiful silences, full of secret words. Sudden, silly bursts of laughter. Short, inconclusive phrases. Thoughts that got tangled up and went round in circles. Hair in my eyes. That constant sense of triumphant complicity.”
“That constant sense of triumphant complicity”–strangely refreshing words capturing the essence of an extramarital affair. Perhaps only someone like Lucrezia, with illusion about love, can articulate the illusory nature of a love affair.

“It’s an upsetting film because the white light is there the whole time, and because little by little everyone dies.”
This description of Alberico’s film is a good summary many of Ginzburg's books.

Alberica: “I have his bald, dry head in front of me, as smooth as an egg. …I like his head. It’s familiar to me.” Dr. Lanzara does not occupy much space in the novel, but his familiar head gives a sense of solace not provided by family and friends.

Lucrezia, imagining Piero’s return: “I had even prepared how I was going to refuse to do this—affectionately, calmly, firmly, very firmly and resolutely.”
Is it bleak or hopeful that Lucrezia is always able to see a preferable alternative to the dire reality?

“The house where I live now is profoundly alien to me, and it has always been.”
Change the word “house” to “life” or “world”, the statement would still be an apt summery of Giuseppe’s situation, and many others'.