My Review: The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg

Rating: 5/5

"Tell me the truth," I said."

"What truth?" he echoed. He was making a rapid sketch in his notebook and now he showed me what it was: a long, long train with a big cloud of black smoke swirling over it and himself leaning out of a window to wave a hankerchief.

I shot him between the eyes."

Wow! What a way to start a book!

The Dry Heart is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. It is incredible to believe that the writer managed to create such a compelling and complex story in less than 200 pages. In a sense the beginning is the ending, and the ending the beginning. The story begins when the narrator, a young women, shoots her older husband, Alberto, between the eyes, and it continues to explain the reasoning behind her actions, before ending with the vague future she faces alone.

After the shooting of her husband, the female narrator guides us through the timeline of their relationship, from the very moment they meet at a mutual friend's house, to the death of their daughter. From writing the book in the first person, particularly from the point of view of the wife, you have a great insight into the psychological workings of her mind, and therefore her reasoning for her actions. When the narrator first meets Alberto, her thoughts are not filled with romance and love, but grateful friendship. However, the writer cleverly works the gloomy settings of the boarding house (the narrator's residency), her dull teaching job, and her troubling spinsterhood to create an atmosphere of desperation to escape this dismal life in the form of marriage. We learn of how the narrator's loneliness and entrapment leads her mind into believing she is in love with a man when she really isn't. It was easy to sympathise with the narrator's thoughts, for the writer shows us how a desperate and sad mind can mistake kind attention for love. This is shown particularly in the sentence below:

"Before I knew Alberto I used to feel so dull and unattractive that I was sure I should always be alone, but after I got the impression that he was in love with me I began to think that if I could please him then I might please someone else"

Despite the novel being published in 1947, I feel, especially this quote above, resonates so well with even young women today, as those feelings of lowness make us change our appearance and character to impress our peers. Francesca, the narrator's young and exciting cousin, who is essentially a very modern woman for her time, opposing marriage and children, symbolises for me, the female idols of instagram. In this novellla, another thing which pushes our narrator to trick her mind into falling in love with Alberto is Francesa, whose exciting escapades of one night stands and endless romantic adoration makes the narrator want to have an interesting story of her own to tell. I could relate to the narrator's desire to seem exciting to Francesca, as on social media, we often see fantastic, yet false lives of people displayed, making our own lives feel boring and small, and so we try to compete with our own posts of false excitement, just as the narrator tries to portray her romantic entanglement with Alberto as exciting. However, this is far from the truth.

Alberto is portrayed by the narrator as a dull, yet mysterious older man, appearing and disappearing when he pleases without explanation, which both delights and repulses the narrator. In the beginning of their relationship, the narrator and reader learn very little about the man of Alberto, except that he is cultured, lives with his old mother, and wears a light raincoat. You can not say that Alberto leads the narrator on in any way, for he is polite and distant, which frustrates our narrator as her desperation leads to her falling deeper in love with him. After his mother dies, Alberto asks the narrator to marry him, and she is delighted, despite the disappointment of Francesca. However, this marriage is dull and even more trapping than her life in the boarding house. Alberto, who once listened to her stories and sketched her face, becomes disinterested and disappears frequently to visit his lover, Giovanna, even after the narrator gives birth to their daughter.

Giovanna is a central character in this novella, and despite the fact that we don't often see her, she is integral to the story. The obsession that Alberto, and his friend Augusto, have with this married woman is strange, for they both purchase guns to kill themselves for the unrequited love for Giovanna (the same gun which is ironically used later by the narrator to kill her husband). As a reader, I found it hard to understand this mad obsession with this woman, as she is not described as being incredibly beautiful or interesting, yet the insignificance of her personal details are paralleled to the significant impact she has on the narrator, who because of this woman, kills her husband.

One thing the writer does really well is show how weak, pathetic and manipulative the character of Alberto really is. After these long disappearances with Giovanna, he describes them to his wife as being "perfectly hellish trips", as if he wants us and the narrator to pity him for his affair. In my opinion, I did not feel a lot of pity towards Alberto, as I imagined him only as a very pathetic man, who worshipped a woman he could not have, whilst forgetting, and even blaming, the marriage he was in as being an obstacle for his affair. This is shown in the quote below, when Alberto is trying to defend Giovanna to his wife:

"We met too late. But I'm very much attached to her, and it disgusts me to live with another woman (the narrator)"

This quote highlights the true man that Alberto really is, and how deep his obsession with Giovanna is. He describes his wife as "another woman", as if he is cheating on Giovanna with her and the use of the word "disgust" highlights his true feelings towards his wife and their marriage. Furthermore, throughout the book, Alberto constantly defends Giovanna, for example, after he returns from one of his trips he says: "She can't help being unkind", showing how deep his love for this woman, where he can overlook all her flaws and make her blameless, yet he cannot reciprocate these feelings towards his wife.

After the death of their daughter, the narrator and reader begin to believe that Alberto has turned a new leaf, as he is portrayed as being more attentive and kind, ridding the house of all the baby's things (which the narrator wants) and not going away with Giovanna. However this does not last long, and as he prepares to go on another trip with Giovanna, the narrator, whose thoughts have become increasingly obsessive about the revolver in Alberto's desk draw, shoots him.

I loved the crisp, neat writing and the fact it had no chapters. This, to me, symbolized how the narrators life had bled boringly between the years, yet the writing was suspenseful making the book feel fast paced and full of action. Another thing which I loved about the book was the psychological aspect, as though the narrator kills the husband, you don't feel shocked or angry, but almost happy for the narrator. Through the book, you see how she has suffered mentally with the manipulation and lies of her husband, and the death of her child, which actually make you feel sympathy towards her rather than disbelief for her actions. The narrator's story is a heartbreaking one, as you see how desperate, lonely and unloved she had become, so much that, she felt her only escape was to kill her husband in order to gain her freedom and happiness again.

This book is perfect for someone who doesn't have the time to read a lot, as it is short, fast paced and an incredible story about unrequited love, loneliness and the desperation to be free.