Natalia Ginzburg

FAMILY LEXICON

Translated by Jenny McPhee

224pp. NYRB Classics. Paperback, $14.95.

978 1 59017 838 6

The phrase "deceptively simple" is a reviewer's cliche, but few descriptions are more suited to the prose of Natalia Ginzburg. Her restraint speaks of an almost radical self-effacement that grants the objects of her vision vivid independence from any pretension to artistry. In this, she resembles Chekhov, to whom she paid frequent homage in essays and interviews. In Family Lexicon, she turns her attention to the words and phrases that bind kith and kin as repositories for meaning and lost time.

Although above all a portrait of her siblings and parents, Family Lexicon presents dozens of characters...