The Dry Heart
Ratings8
Average rating4.4
15
Ratings8
Average rating4.4
Finally back in print, a frighteningly lucid feminist horror story about marriage The Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement, “I shot him between the eyes.” Everything in between is a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness, desperation, and bitterness—and as the tale proceeds, the narrator’s murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability. In this powerful novella, Natalia Ginzburg’s writing is white-hot, fueled by rage, stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality; she transforms an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that might pose the question: why don’t more wives kill their husbands?
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One sentence synopsis... A 1947 novella about an Italian woman's unhappy marriage which begins and ends with the pronouncement: ‘I shot him between the eyes'.
Read it if you like... themes of family, failed relationships, and Italian literature a la Ferrante. The style reminds me of Sally Rooney - extremely up close with the characters but you come away feeling they're so much more to them that could be said still. Descriptions of setting written very play like.
Dream casting... Stanley Tucci has to be Alberto the disappointing husband who fancies himself an artist and intellectual but constantly misquotes Proust.
