The Dry Heart
Author: Natalia Ginzburg
Published by: Daunt Books
Pages: 108
Format: Paperback
My Rating ★★★★
Published by: Daunt Books
Pages: 108
Format: Paperback
My Rating ★★★★
‘I took his revolver out of his desk drawer and shot him between the eyes.’
Four years before she shoots her husband and walks to a café for a coffee, a lonely young woman living in a boarding house meets and older man called Alberto. They go for long walks along the river and on the outskirts of the city; they look like lovers, although they’re not.
Alberto doesn’t tell her anything about himself and she asks few questions. Still, with little else to distract her, she lets her imagination run wild and convinces herself to fall in love. Though he doesn’t feel the same, Alberto asks her to marry him and they have a baby. But Alberto is a man who tires quickly of everything.
Four years before she shoots her husband and walks to a café for a coffee, a lonely young woman living in a boarding house meets and older man called Alberto. They go for long walks along the river and on the outskirts of the city; they look like lovers, although they’re not.
Alberto doesn’t tell her anything about himself and she asks few questions. Still, with little else to distract her, she lets her imagination run wild and convinces herself to fall in love. Though he doesn’t feel the same, Alberto asks her to marry him and they have a baby. But Alberto is a man who tires quickly of everything.
My thoughts:
The Dry Heart is a short, dark, and psychologically rich novel that forensically examines how an unhappy marriage eventually ends in murder. The book begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement: “I shot him between the eyes.”
In the first line the narrator asks her husband to tell her the truth. He evades the question. So she shoots him between the eyes. Then she sets about trying to tell us the truth.
The protagonist is problematic and complicated. She is intensely self-loathing, and her strong desire to marry comes not from love, but to "know at every hour of the day where he was and what he was doing." She expresses similar sentiments on multiple occasions, so that it soon becomes clear that what she wants most of all is to drown out her mundane existence by attaching herself to someone she views to be interesting.
While Alberto courts her he reads her Rilke poems and sketches her. He makes a show of being interested in what she has to say. All the courting tricks and tools of the male are soon dropped when they are married.
The plot quickly takes a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness, desperation, and bitterness. After a while, the narrator's murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability. In just over 100 pages, Ginzburg has been able to transform the unhappy tale of an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that seems to beg the question: why don't more wives kill their husbands?
My heart ached for this woman whose spirit was crushed by a loveless marriage. Unsentimental and direct, Ginzburg’s writing held me from start to finish. This is such a quietly chilling novella and a great read.
Overall reaction:
The Dry Heart is a short, dark, and psychologically rich novel that forensically examines how an unhappy marriage eventually ends in murder. The book begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement: “I shot him between the eyes.”
In the first line the narrator asks her husband to tell her the truth. He evades the question. So she shoots him between the eyes. Then she sets about trying to tell us the truth.
The protagonist is problematic and complicated. She is intensely self-loathing, and her strong desire to marry comes not from love, but to "know at every hour of the day where he was and what he was doing." She expresses similar sentiments on multiple occasions, so that it soon becomes clear that what she wants most of all is to drown out her mundane existence by attaching herself to someone she views to be interesting.
While Alberto courts her he reads her Rilke poems and sketches her. He makes a show of being interested in what she has to say. All the courting tricks and tools of the male are soon dropped when they are married.
The plot quickly takes a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness, desperation, and bitterness. After a while, the narrator's murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability. In just over 100 pages, Ginzburg has been able to transform the unhappy tale of an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that seems to beg the question: why don't more wives kill their husbands?
My heart ached for this woman whose spirit was crushed by a loveless marriage. Unsentimental and direct, Ginzburg’s writing held me from start to finish. This is such a quietly chilling novella and a great read.
Overall reaction: