I have read quite a lot in translation lately. 

My new favorite novel is Her Side of the Story, by the Italian writer Alba de Cespedes, translated by Jill Foulston.  You may have read de Cespedes’s Forbidden Notebook, which was published last year.

Her Side of the Story is longer and deeper, a brilliant, half-mythic sketch of the culture of Italian girls and their mothers in the 1930s and ‘40s, and an exploration of the women’s universal disappointment in married love. 

Published in 1949, this elegant novel is narrated by Alessandra Torregiani. She is looking back at her past as a solitary young girl who adores her mother, a former concert pianist and an itinerant piano teacher.  In the first third of the book, Alessandra describes her impoverished girlhood in an apartment building where all the women are neglected by their husbands and most have lovers. It is a bit surreal:  all these women dreaming of love, waiting to experience what marriage promised and failed to deliver.  No one judges the adulteresses: even Alessandra and her friend, Fulvia, knew the lovers by sight, and  Fulvia’s mother has a lover, known as the Captain.  And later Alessandra’s beautiful mother, who is happiest when her husband is absent, falls in love with Hervey, the older brother of one of her students, who shares her passion for music.  This does not end well:  there is a shattering event that affects the rest of Alessandra’s life.  But certainly this pattern of true love, then marriage, then disappointment in married love, is repeated throughout the novel.

De Cespedes writes both dreamily and painfully about the cycle of women in love. Of course Alessandra forgets her observations about marriage when she falls in love with Francesco Minelli, a professor, in 1941.  Their love is an idyll, and she assumes it will continue so after marriage.  But he is never at home: they no longer take long walks on weekends or go to cafes.  He is a radical university professor, involved in the Resistance, and devotes all his time to going to secret meetings.  Alessandra has a secretarial job, and is also a literature student, but she is alone and lonely in the apartment.  There is no women’s community in this apartment house, as there was in her childhood home. She still loves Francesco obsessively, but can’t get his attention. Eventually, he loses his job. But as he becomes more and more involved in dangerous anti-fascist politics, she is increasingly disappointed and upset by their deteriorating relationship.

De Cepesdes’s lucid, pitch-perfect narration of depression and obsession will make you grieve for Alessandra’s disappointment in love, and for all the other women’s disappointment in love.

Here is an example of the insightful, beautifully-written prose.

I was no longer interested in a degree. I preferred to read with no order or plan, although only regular, methodical study drew Francesco’s attention. I wanted to stay at home with him, he with his books and I with mine, but he was always busy these days, nervous and easily irritated. I once heard him talking on the radio, and when I heard him say, in our rooms, things that had nothing to do with us or our affairs, he seemed to be truly lost. He was always seeing people and pursuing interests that were different from me. He was locked in his world, finding life and passion in it: everything that had been our world no longer interested him.

Jill Foulston’s translation is superb. I loved this book and strongly recommend it. And I hope more of de Cespedes’s books will be translated soon.