The City & the House

The city is Rome, where the characters brood over the lost paradise of Le Margherite, the country house where they all once gathered, drawn by the warmth of Lucrezia and her husband Piero, before the marriage broke up over the latest of Lucrezia's many infidelities. Ginzburg (The Little Virtues has cast her new book in the form of an epistolatory novel. Giuseppe, a former lover of Lucrezia who has fled to America, is the recipient of many of the letters describing his friends' and relatives' chaotic activities back in Italy as they make love, make dinner, make trouble and try with little success to make coherent lives for themselves. Though it recounts suffering and several untimely deaths, the book's overall tone is one of welcoming acceptance of life's variety, with the joys and sorrows that entails. Ginzburg's supple, lyrical prose is somewhat marred by the translation's occasional Briticisms, but this warm-hearted novel is an excellent example of the distinguished Italian novelist and essayist's art. (May 28)