Voices in the Evening

In another of the understated, richly evocative novels for which she is known, Ginzburg takes us into an Italian village whose almost claustrophobic atmosphere reflects its residents' entanglements as they cope in various ways with the creeping changes in lifestyle brought about by fascism and by modernization. At the center of this elegant, spare novel, translated with apparent seamlessness, is a doomed, yet not sad, love affair. Elsa, romantic and introspective, and Tommasino, son of the family whose aging factory dominates the town, a man who combines ``linear programming'' with Byronesque angst, conduct an affair that while not greatly passionate, has yet its own fulfillment. The lovers, who do not meet in their own village, where society and family (a ``trail of relations like a long snake'') entrap them, agree to avoid marriage. Aptly titled, the novel captures the intergenerational stories told and re-told in quiet evening conversations. (Oct.)