Backlisted - Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

Publisher Marigold Atkey and journalist Emily Rhodes join us for a discussion of Lessico famigliare, Natalia Ginzburg's novelistic memoir or autobiographical novel, first published in Italy in 1963 and most recently translated by Jenny McPhee as Family Lexicon (Daunt/NYRB). Ginzburg had a long and distinguished career in Italian literature, theatre and politics. This episode explores her fascinating life and asks why her work is finding new readers and admirers in the 21st century, amongst them Rachel Cusk and Sally Rooney. Also in this episode John enjoys How To Gut a Fish (Bloomsbury), a debut collection of short stories by Shelia Armstrong; while Andy reflects on Vashti Bunyan's pilgrimage to the Outer Hebrides, as recounted in Wayward (White Rabbit), her memoir of the 1960s and beyond. Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length) 12:57 - Wayward by Vashti Bunyan. 21:24 - How To Gut A Fish by Shelia Armstrong. 27:17 - Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Discover more value than ever at Loblaws. Like Fresh Promise. Produce is carefully selected and checked for freshness. And if it's not fresh, it's free.

Yes, you heard that right. From the crispest lettuce to the juiciest apples, Loblaws is committed to fresh, so you get the best fruits and veggies. Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws, in-store and online. Conditions may apply. See in-store for details. Before we started recording, there was some intense chat between two of our friends here about bikes, and those were our producer, Nicky Birch, and our guest, Marigold. So, Marigold, are you a keen cyclist? Yes.

Because you have one friend here, if that's the case. Yeah, very much so. More than one. Yeah, throughout the year, cycling on my single speed, and I need to get the gears on my racer fixed so I can get out into the countryside. Oh, lovely. Oh, wow, you're a proper cyclist. I don't do sporties or anything, but yeah, I love.

I'm a speed junkie, so I like racing along and it keeps me sane, clears my mind. Do you welcome hills, Marigold? Yes, even though I have a single speed because I love a challenge. Unbelievable. And so even I think Highgate Hill is probably the worst on a single speed. Tough. Is that possible? If you get a red light, no.

It's pretty horrendous. Yeah, I've done it once. First, I'm just bowing down because anyone who can cycle up Highgate Hill, which is, well, I think it's the second biggest hill in London as opposed to Crystal Palace. I'm not sure which is, I think it's smaller, but yeah, to cycle up there on a single speed is pretty much, yeah, it's impressive.

My question was how fast as a speed junkie can you get from Peckham to Kentish Town? Oh, well, I know exactly because last Christmas I didn't realise I was supposed to be working in the Owl and I was all setting down for a happy day of working from home when Gary, the beloved bookshop manager of the Owl, messaged me at half nine to say, oh, I think you're supposed to be working in the Owl today.

And I did it in 35 minutes, which I don't quite know how I managed to do that. But thank you. Very good, Marigold. That is very impressive. I was not a pretty sight, I must admit, by the time I got there. A sweaty bookseller. Yeah.

I just think I should state at this point that John rides a penny farthing and I ride a bone shaker. Of course, as the hosts of this podcast. Nothing, as you say, nothing with gears or indeed tyres. It's quite Italian, this talk about cycling that's true yeah very italian bicycle thieves i would have thought that the uh the dad in the family lexicon would be up for an alpine adventure wouldn't he or up the dolomites he would absolutely not wear lycra no yeah he's not a man he's not a man who's gonna to wear light crates. Well, this wasn't the direction I expected this show to go in, but I'm pleased.

Everyone's invested. Good. All right. Shall we start? Let's do it. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find us on a northern Italian hillside in the late 1920s.

We're wearing hobnailed boots greased with whale fat, balaclava helmets and snow goggles, even though it's quite warm and sunny. Our pockets bulge with pears and hard-boiled eggs. And the red-haired man striding ahead of us in a threadbare, rust-coloured wool jacket stops every now and then to shout, Knitwits and jackasses! I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And today we are joined by two guests making their backlisted debuts.

Hello, Emily Rhodes and Marigold Atkey. Hello. Hello. Thanks for having us on. Well, thank you for joining us. Let's do your introductions. Emily, now, look, I'm going to ask questions as we go along because there's all elements of your intros that, to me,

make little to no sense. But we'll interrogate them as they go on. I'm so sorry. No, it's not. No. Sorry. I'm sorry. I don't want to put you on the back foot anyway emily runs emily's walking book club which meets monthly to talk about books while walking on hampstead heath now let's here's the first thing okay to me reading and going outdoors are not compatible with one another and that's the appeal of reading so what what do you

do you read from the books while you're walking around hampstead heath to one another good question i mean i think if we were all reading from the books while we walked around hampstead heath we there have occasionally been sort of falls down potholes um but no um in general people people have read the book beforehand and then just like at a normal book club you discuss the book but rather than sitting around a table or um i don't know someone's living room you're walking while you talk. Au plein air. I love it. Exactly. The conversations are a bit easier because you're walking, you're sort of side by side with someone. It also means you can have lots of conversations at once because at each meeting we get, say, 30 to 50 people. We obviously all sort of splinter into little groups of two three four five as we chat and then we kind of come together at certain points and i i sort of guide the discussion so i i launch

everyone off on a question or a subject and everyone's sort of natter natter natter about that as we walk get to the mixed bathing pond stop regroup, sort of go over what people have said. Maybe I read a bit out while standing still, not walking. And then we go off on the next one. I love the idea of being able to just walk off if somebody says something I disagree with. Yes. This sounds quite like a dating thing as well.

Has there been any romances off the back of this? Funny you should say that Nikki um so the the funny thing is like the membership is like 95% female women of all ages yeah anything from teenagers up to people in their 80s but almost all women very few men and um when it sort of was beginning in its infancy after about a year or so we got a man who arrived um and all the women sort of pounced but um but what was completely outrageous is that that one time this new woman came and she was dressed completely inappropriately for a walk on the heath. Not sensible shoes.

Well, normally people are wearing, you know, trainers or wellies, you know, zip up. You know, sort of prepared to battle the elements. This lady, she looked like she'd stepped out of the 50s. She had one on one of those sort of puffy skirts, these little shoes that, you know, I'm surprised they didn't fall apart. And she just sort of nabbed him. She did not jump the queue. She jumped the queue.

And they left together and they never came again. Wow. Wow. Job done. What was the book? Oh, God, I wish I could remember. I don't think either of them had even read the book. It was completely outrageous.

Perfect. Hilarious. Feels like an amazing business model in there somewhere. There's nearly 1,000 members of this thing. There's like a stampede across the heath of... Yeah, three women. ...shouting, I couldn't relate to it, to one another. I found those characters unlikable, Pushes in the Pond. I should ask you, if people are interested in joining,

where can they find you? Yes, so the best thing is to sign up to the newsletter, which is at emilyswalkingbookclub.substack.com. It's got all the details of the next walks and the next books and also kind of interesting links to other things the author's written. They're quite content rich. No further questions, Your Honour. Emily also runs a book club for AGK Camden and she writes about books in the arts

for various publications, including the FT, The Spectator and The Guardian. Let us now turn to Marigold. Marigold Atkey is a publisher at Daunt Books, home to such backlisted favourites as Dorothy Baker's Cassandra at the Wedding. That's proved to be a very popular title. Yeah, people love that book. I hope there's been a spike in your turnover, Marigold. They're happy, yeah.

Wow, has there? That's what we like to hear. God, that's great. And Barbara Cummings, The Vet's Daughter. Barbara, this is so nice that you're bringing back some of the Barbara Cummings novels. And we're pursuing the rights of another one with the terrifying title

The Skinchair, I think it's called. Ah, that's the one. That's brilliant. I think it's... Ah, that's the one. Good Lord. That's quite rare at the moment. That's brilliant. I think there's more of her books in print now than at any time since the 80s. I think that's right. I think nearly everything is available.

And if you can get The Skin Chairs, that would be incredible. That's such a horrid book. Bring it back. Really nightmare. It's got an amazing scene with a monkey. Anyone who's read it will know what. Bring it back. Really nightmare. It's got an amazing scene with a monkey. Anyone who's read it will know what I'm talking about. It's horrible.

Great. Marigold began her publishing career at the literary agency David Haim Associates, where as well as working with authors such as J.M. Kertseyer and Stephen Fry, she looked after estates, including those of Graham Greene, Muriel Spark and Dylan Thomas. Also a few backlisted names in there. Fast forward through editorial positions at Bloomsbury, William Collins and Fourth Estate. And she's been at Daunt Books for pretty much bang on a year. She goes to their office.

You've already worked this out, everybody. Beneath the Owl Bookshop, the wonderful Owl Bookshop in Kensington Town. She gets there on her bike. She breaks the law. She breaks speed records. I'm actually very well behaved. It's also delightful to meet someone who was an agent who's become a publisher.

It's almost always the other way around. And do you consider that to have been a a happy decision marigold oh yeah absolutely spill your guts here but no i always hated the moment of handing over a book to the publisher my baby you get to be more of a control freak i think as an editor and your authors at daunt include brandon taylor scholastic mukasonga and reissues, including you're looking after MFK. There ought to be a little backlisted bell here we ring every time. MFK Fisher and Natalia Ginsberg.

Yes. Yeah, my predecessors have done an extremely classy job of building up the Dauntless because it's only 10 years old. Yeah, we love it, as you know. I do want to, one of the things I thought I'd like to talk about when we get into the main body of the show is actually the, because I think listeners will find it very interesting, the strategy and tactics, both of those things, about bringing back the list of an author from the past

and making them and it feel contemporary, which is what Dawn's have done really successfully with Ginsberg. And I have some theories that I would like to run past you. You can either confirm or deny them. We'll see. So the book

we're here to discuss is Family Lexicon, a novel-cum-memoir by Natalia Ginsberg, translated from the Italian by Jenny McPhee for the new edition, published in 2017 by Dalt Books in the UK and the New York Review of Books Classics in the US. The book was originally published in 1963 as Lessico Familiare by the distinguished Italian publishing house Giulio Einaudi Editore. It became an immediate bestseller and won that year's Strager Prize for Fiction.

And it was first translated into English in 1967, was published by the Hogarth Press as Family Sayings. Despite being set during the rise of fascism in Italy, Ginsburg's narrative focuses on the domestic arrangements of her own eccentric family rather than attempting the grand sweep of political history. In recent years, the republication of her work in English by Daunt Books and NYRB Classics in the US have brought her a new generation of readers, including the novelist Rachel Cusk, who has written that Ginzburg gives us a new template for the female voice and an idea of what it might sound like.

Anyway, more of that. Before we plunge into the nitwitteries and doodledums of middle-class life in 1930s Turin, Andy, what dribbledrams have you been reading this week? I've been reading a book by the singer Vashti Bunyan, which was published by White Rabbit in April. singer Vashti Bunyan, which was published by White Rabbit in April. It's a memoir of her life and career,

but mostly what happened to her in the 1960s. I don't know how many of you know Vashti's records. She made an album in the late 60s, which came out in 1970, called Just Another Diamond Day, which is a very beautiful and at one time obscure record, but it was reissued in the year 2000 and has gone on to become something of a modern classic and gave Vashti the career that she'd never really had. She'd made that one record and disappeared,

but she came back. She made an album in 2005 produced by max richter called look aftering and then another one that she recorded herself called heart leap in 2014 both very beautiful records i find her and the story of how she made her music, totally fascinating. She made a few singles in the 1960s, none of which really took. And then she decided, as you did in that era, that what she would do was instead of trying to be a pop star, she would walk to Scotland to live in a cottage owned by Donovan. She would walk from Surrey to the Outer Hebrides. And that

is exactly what she did. And that's what this book is about. It's about her and her then partner, their dogs and their horse, travelling through England and Scotland in the late 1960s. And that's what a lot of the songs on Just Another Diamond Day are about. They describe that journey. And I saw Vashti Banyan playing a concert a few weeks ago at the Barbican in London. And it was very moving to see her

as a septuagenarian playing songs that she wrote in her early 20s. And saying, she quite frequently said before the song, this isn't, what this describes is not what the journey was like, it's what I hoped it would be and wasn't. And the book is a description of what the journey was like. And actually it's a tremendously melancholy book. Most of it is saying her mother had died shortly before she made this decision. And in retrospect,

she says, well, I shouldn't have somebody should have been watching out for me and nobody was. And what I most and what she seems to remember about the journey is how wet and cold most of it was and how it took years. You know, I say it, the phrase, and then she walked from London to the Outer Hebrides, like you could do it, like you could do it in 40 minutes, like the LP describes. But of course it doesn't. It took literally years to do.

Did she do it all in one go? They wintered in a couple of places, but mostly they just kept plodding, clip-clopping forward, playing the odd song. She comes back to London and goes to Sound Techniques, I think, in Chelsea to record Just Another Diamond Day. It's produced by Joe Boyd. There are members of Fairport Convention playing on it, none of whom she'd never even heard of Fairport Convention. none of whom she'd never even heard of Fairport Convention. So what you hear on the record is someone who's come off the road,

gone to Chelsea in the late 60s, made this incredible music that then disappears for 30 years. I love the book anyway. It's a really beautiful book. A book about someone who is lost. And I think a lot of people, perhaps in midlife, would really relate to this book. No spoilers, but the note of melancholy is sounded all the way through this book,

and of course that's all I'm really interested in, sitting indoors being melancholy, so I enjoyed it very much. I'm going to read you a little bit. This chapter is called Islington High street london july 1968 and what you should know is uh she's acquired a caravan and a horse called betsy at this point i wore my late aunt's 1930s nightdress nothing else nothing on my feet and a pink crepe bias cut flower printed nightdress long enough to trip me if I didn't hold it up. My hair was long too, dark brown unbrushed, and I led a fat black horse with a white star on her forehead, a short tail, and one missing shoe. My main concern was that she should not tread on my toes, but her big feet were always thoughtfully placed.

concern was that she should not tread on my toes but her big feet were always thoughtfully placed. Later on I would watch her as she ate from a bucket of oats in a farmyard with small yellow chicks pecking up the grains that spilled from her mouth. She trod carefully between them all. My feet had always been safe. Right now we needed a blacksmith and our directions took us down Islington High Street with people staring out of buses and stopping on the pavements to watch us go by as we looked for the Whipbread Brewery. There, we were told, they had a stable of grey shire horses who, six at a time, pulled the giant drays around the streets delivering barrels of ale to the pubs.

These horses had their own forge up in the far corner of their stable, a stable as large in scale as they were with their names like High, Gog and Magog and their feet the size of frying pans. Hello Bess, said the blacksmith as we walked towards the forge. The dusty sun in my eyes from the big high windows. We had thought her name was Betsy. The Romany Alfie Ball, who had sold her to us the day before, had called her Betsy. Nah, said the blacksmith, that's old Bess, I'd know her anywhere. Old? We'd had a friend who knew about horses give her a looking over, and she'd been pronounced young enough, about ten maybe, but it turned out that Bess must have been born before the law against docking horses' tails was passed, making her 20 or more. The blacksmith showed us how her teeth proved his

point. She had seemingly lived her long life out on the streets of London pulling delivery vans. Bakers, grocers and latterly a flower seller had all taught her traffic wisdom, which was just as well for us when she stopped at traffic lights and went the right way round roundabouts the smith i mean the thing is i've got to say is you read this you think how is she ever going to get to scotland the misconceived nature of the enterprise anyway the smith made four shoes of iron red hot from the fire banging them into shape on the anvil whilst telling us she would need them specially built up on account of her habit of turning her back feet with every step. This would wear her shoes down quickly, he said. He didn't ask us for any money, just a tune or a song. Robert looked at me, the singer, but I turned my head away. Robert had a

harmonica in his pocket and so played a bit of a tune and danced round the stable in his boots with the flapping soles. I watched through my fingers in my pink nightdress thinking how can a grown man dance like that as if round a toadstool without feeling daft. He didn't mind at all. I think at that moment he thought himself a little person, small and elven with leggings and perfectly pointed soft green shoes. Everyone there, the blacksmith, the stable boys and the dray drivers all enjoyed the show. We made our grateful goodbyes and I led Betsy, who would be Bess from now on, her real old name, the little old horse we had thought so large that morning, out past the Brilliant. Amazing.

So I'm sorry about that went on a bit, but it's so beautiful and so evocative. Imagine Islington had a brewery and a blacksmith in 1966. I mean, I live not far from Islington High Street. That's completely mind-blowing. This horse being a delivery horse, you know, this is in the 60s and... Dre horses, yeah. Well, it was all fields around there when you were a girl, Emily.

John, what have you been reading? I've been reading a collection of stories, a debut collection of stories, by a young Irish writer called Sheila Armstrong. The book is called How to Gut a Fish, and it's published in February, I think, and has had some good reviews. And it is published by Bloomsbury.

We've been reading a lot of short stories this year, and a lot of, I think, really strong and amazing collections, but this one really, really stuck in my head. I mean, it's that thing sometimes in short stories I get annoyed by the clumsy use of, you know, deus ex machina or the use of kind of deliberately shocking bits of plot to kind of keep you paying attention. But she writes with such, I mean, really striking originality

and a lot of these stories are quite, I mean, extremely dark. She's, I think, from Sligo in the west of Ireland. So a lot of them are set in Ireland and a lot of them are set in rural locations. I'm now going to read a tiny little bit from the title story but there's a hole in a field on a kind of ancient site which just swallows people very hard to get you to believe that a hole in a in a field can swallow people up without you uh without you kind of rebelling there is another scene where there's a woman who's trussed up,

a young girl who's trussed up at a car boot sale and people are bidding for various organs. As I say, it's dark, it's macabre, but it's brilliantly done. It reminded me, I suppose, a bit very early Ian McHugh and the very early stories. It sounded like Sarah Hall to me. Yeah, a bit, but it pushes it even further, I think, than Sarah Hall. The one thing I do know, she's in a writing group called

Check Off or Fuck Off, which I really want to be. That's good. I really, really, although there are some grim things in this book, I came away with absolutely excited in a way that I don't. I'm not often as excited by debut collections as I was by this. I'm just going to read you. So How to Gut a Fish is 26. It's basically 26 bullet points that the story is presented in that way.

And I'm just going to read you the first couple so you get a feel for the brilliance of our language. I mean, it's the language that carries the whole thing i think one how to gut a fish one first the feel of the salt in the ridges around your fingernails the burnt itch of it the dried white flakes scattered across the empty deck of your father's boat now take the handle of your knife and turn it round set the blade back to back with the spine of the mackerel and scrape. A thousand eyelids will come off, a hundred insect skins, a rainbow of purple and blue and green. Rub, rub, rub until the skin is smooth or at least smoother.

No need to fuss. You'll never get them all no matter how you try. Your father once told you if you swallowed a scale, a fish would take seed in your belly and grow. Two, now blunt your arms into instruments and blunt your heart to the little mouth's gasping. Don't forget that stressed fish taste awful, bitter and tough, so don't delay, kill it quickly. But you know your own soul. If it brought in more bookings, you'd set up a system of slow motionmotion death on the deck of the Mola Mola, that's his boat, with the complicated water wheels and staggered buckets and cages for dry drowning. When you visited the dockside markets at Sakai Minato,

you saw a fisherman make a careful cut into a yellowtail's head, take a wire and spike it down the spinal cord. No time for the muscles to flex and stiffen, for panic to turn to bitterness. A little flip of the tail and then it was done. Mercy disguised as cruelty, a quick and shuddering end. The blood coloured a bowl of water from clear to rose pink to crimson. Ikejime, the Japanese call it, a benediction. You'd like to learn how to kill fish this way, as a party trick, but you know your few remaining five-star reviews would trickle away. The mouths of mothers would turn down at the corners,

their noses wrinkled like elephant skin, even as their children fling guts at the seagulls. Better the old way, better to break a fish's spine across the gunwales. Three. Find a prayer as the little death whispers away across the deck and over your shoulders into the sunset. Look your fish in the eye, they say the last thing a man sees is imprinted on his pupil. You check every catch this way for your own reflection, but there's only a dark hole of fright.

You switch your gaze from the fish to the sky as the wind picks up. The cold Atlantic air is splitting into two and streaming around the anchored bow of the Mola Mola. And that story ends up in a very different place to where it starts. It does tell you exactly how to gut a fish in passing. So it's both poetic and practical. It's both poetic and practical.

Yeah, really, really exciting. Who's that published by? And it's published by Bloomsbury and it's How to Gut a Fish by Sheila Armstrong. Also, it has, you can't see it on this, but it has a really beautiful, this is a proof, there's a really beautiful jacket of fish scales. As they say, a writer to look out for.

She's going to write many more brilliant books, I think. Have you gutted a fish since reading that book? I have not. I found it inspiring, yes. I have gutted many fish in my time. Let me just say that the advice is is is really practical sound should you find yourself staring into the hollow eyes of a mackerel it's a it's a useful thing we'll be back in just a sec That was by Valtaro Musette,

and it came out on Columbia Records as a 78 in 1946. It's Italian, and it's called Old Memories, which seemed so perfect for the book that we're discussing today, Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginsberg. for the book that we're discussing today, Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginsberg. We slightly changed the rules of Batlisted, because we can, because we run it,

to invite Marigold and Emily in to talk with us about this book. But, John, this was your idea. It was. But it's something we very rarely do and i wonder why what it was about family lexicon that grabbed you to the extent that you said we should really we should get in there and make a show about this i think it's quite it's quite rare to read a book that is set in a period of historical turbulence i mean this is italy in in the 30s, the rise of fascism, the rise of Mussolini. I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting what I got, which is the most brilliant kind of timeless portrayal of how the family dynamics work.

I mean, the family lexicon or family sayings, it's sort of built around the parents who are kind of amazing double act. The father who is calling everybody nitwits and jackasses and even worse things than that. And the mother who's always telling sort of stories. And it made me, I found it incredibly moving and also quite kind of revealing. And you realise that, yes, people do somehow survive. Consoling fictions about one's family is what enabled people to survive through the absolute worst. And she went through, she suffered terribly. I don't know how various members of the family died.

But it's the writing again. It's so extraordinarily well written. It's very interesting you say that it spoke to you of the moment you know the uh the unhappy times through which we're yeah which we're living marigold you look after the ginsburg titles the backlist for dawns what do you think it is about her writing that seems to have spoken to people in the last few years? I think the fact that she's a woman writing from the experience of experiencing war and fascism, but from the domestic scene. And I think in the past, we've tended to have the men on the front

and the drama of that. And I wonder whether it is, obviously we are, for decades, we've been turning to the women writers more, both current and ones from the past. But I wonder if we're more open to more intimate stories now perhaps and I don't know whether that is partly...

I do think social media and podcasts have been crucial in saving many books from being forgotten because word of mouth is so much stronger. People seem more at ease with fiction in translation than the British famously are terribly resistant or have been. But I look at the success of Natalia Ginsberg's books, Clarice the Spectre, Torve Ditlevson, Elsa Moranty, you know, there seems to be a willingness to explore in a way that seems quite new to me. I don't know what you think. I completely agree. I think the Tove, Dip, Levson were in particular,

I really remember seeing, I think they've changed the covers since, but those beautiful, I think they're pale pink. There was a trilogy and they're very slim. I know Family Lexicon is actually one of the longer Ginsbergs, but I think people are more willing to take a risk on a novella. I know I am. And readers understand more. It's not that we copy the covers of other publishers, but I think it helps that there's an instant recognition of what to expect perhaps from a book. So there is that look of a photo with the frame, the cream or pale colour around it.

And there was the brilliant Penguin Modern Classics a few years ago, which again had the photo and then the very striking pattern. So you had that kind of the sense of era and setting, but then you had the kind of the fresh, clean, unexpected design around it. We'll come back to this, too. I'm endlessly fascinated by this topic.

Is there also a sort of feeling, Marigold, that, you know, everyone feels like at the moment we're living through a sort of moment of historical significance. It feels like very frightening and different at the moment, we're living through a sort of moment of historical significance. It feels like very frightening and different at the moment to how it felt, say, a decade ago, I would say. And, you know, do we then, do you think people are looking back to another politically turbulent time to try and sort of learn from the past. I think completely. Reading Family Lexicon and going back over Little Virtues in particular, I couldn't help but think of everybody who's, you know, not just in the Ukraine, in Ukraine, but everywhere across the world. You know, again, we published the French Rwandan author,

Skolasik Mukasonga, who fled Rwanda during the genocide. And she focuses on her mother's experience as well. And how can you not connect the literature of the past to the experiences of people now? And I think, again, we're more aware of the experiences of the normal person. It's far harder to distance yourself from war now, I think, because people have their phones and everything.

News is ongoing the whole time, but you also have citizens reporting. So it's not just the politicians' voices you're hearing. You're hearing the voices of people on the street. You're seeing the photos of the kids with cats in underground stations. You're seeing all sides of the experiences. I also feel perhaps there's a thing going on where the British home front is such a well-mapped territory that after all this time people are beginning to turn their eyes

towards other parts of the world, other homes. There are the homes. There is not only one home front, right? And Emily, I must ask you, you reviewed Family Lexicon when it was republished five years ago in The Guardian. Was that the first Ginsberg that you'd read? Yeah, it was the first Ginsberg I read, but not the first one I saw. I actually also used to work at Daunt as a bookseller.

And I think at the time that Little Virtues was published, I think that was the first one that Dawn published, right? I think it was on maternity leave. And, I mean, Dawn is just such a lovely place to work. And it always feels very kind of welcoming, almost like a sort of family. You know, when I was off on mat leave, you know, in the wilds of having a baby and feeling quite alone, I would often find myself accidentally happening to pass the bookshop to pop in and talk to someone about books, you know, instead of nappies. And I, on one such occasion, popped into Malibu and um you know there was everyone including brett the wonderful manager of the shop and they there was a massive display of the little virtues and he said he said you know this is one that's actually doing really well and show me little virtues and

that looks really interesting um and kind of clocked it but unfortunately didn't read it because you know at the time I was getting no sleep and couldn't really read much at all um but then um I was also I I stopped working at dawn mostly to pursue a career in freelance journalism and as a freelance journalist who reviews books you get sent a lot of books in the post, which is really nice. And when Family Lexicon arrived on my doormat, I instantly recognised it was jacketed, very similar, similar design to the original jacket of Little Virtues.

And I sort of went straight back to that chat with Brett in the shop and thought, oh, yes, this is the book that was doing this. It's by the same author, you know. gonna have a look and I I started reading it and it was just so unlike anything else I'd read and those voices that just leap off the page at you you can hear the father you can you can really hear them you feel like you're at that kitchen table with them and so I sent an email to my editor at the Guardian Justine Jordan that's the other problem as I'm sure you're all familiar with trying to review a book that's a reissue or you know an old book rather than something by a living author is

incredibly hard very few literary editors want to give space to that but I felt that Justine might say yes and um yeah sure enough a few days later she said yes great and well I'm I'm probably going to read a little bit from The Little Virtues later on because that's the first one I read and I absolutely love that book I've read it a couple of times um so good yeah the collection of essays but we're talking about family lexicon which is also as John Sembib published originally was originally published in English as family sayings and also as thing the things we used to say it was published in by Karkinet in the 70s three different translations so this but this book hasn't really gone away in a sense it's always been around it's just gone through different iterations and versions. But I'm going to read the blurb.

And Marigold, you didn't write this because it was one of your predecessors who wrote it. So that's fine. You can criticise it as hard as you like. I've never dreamed. No. Natalia Ginsberg wrote her masterful autobiographical novel Family Lexicon while living in London in the 1960s. Homesick for her Italian family, she summoned them in this celebration of the routines and rituals, in jokes and insults, and above all, the repeated sayings that make up every family.

So that's the lexicon of the title. Giuseppe Levi is a Jewish scientist, consumed by his work and a mania for hiking. Impatient and intractable, he is constantly at odds with his impressionable and wistful wife Lydia, yet he cannot be without her. Together they preside over their five children in a house filled with argument and activity, books and politics, visitors, friends and famous faces. But as their children grow up against the backdrop of Mussolini's Italy, the Levi household must become not only a home, but a stronghold against fascism.

Intimate, enchanting and comedic, Family Lexicon is an unforgettable novel about language, memory and the lasting power that family holds over all of us. I would say that is a holds over all of us. I would say that is a... Ten out of ten. Ten out of ten laser-guided missile of a blurb, encouraging the reader to... Nikki, you've read Family Lexicon.

Would you say that that was an accurate depiction of its contents? Yeah, absolutely. It's all about family life. And actually, when you're reading it, you can't believe that this family actually manages to exist and hasn't sort of disintegrated and split up. And that's kind of amazing, isn't it? It's the way she says near the beginning of the book, we don't meet very often now, my siblings and I. Not surprised. But when we do, the phrases in this book are the things that are our common language. Like lightning conductors, aren't they?

They kind of bring the past back. Mary Gold, have you got a bit you could read us so people can get a sense of how she does it? Yeah, I would love to. I'll try not to cry because I find it very moving. My parents had five children. We now live in different cities, some of us in foreign countries, and we don't write to each other often. When we do meet up, we can be indifferent or distracted.

But for us, it takes just one word. It takes one word, one sentence, one of the old ones from our childhood, heard and repeated countless times. All it takes is for one of us to say, we haven't come to Bergamo on a military campaign or sulfuric acid stinks the fart. And we immediately fall back into our old relationships our childhood our youth all inextricably linked to those words and phrases if my siblings and i were to find ourselves in a dark cave or among millions of people just one of those phrases or words would immediately allow us to recognize each other those phrases are our latin the dictionary of our past they They're like Egyptian

or Assyro-Babylonian hieroglyphics, evidence of a vital core that has ceased to exist, but that lives on in its text, saved from the fury of the waters, the corrosion of time. These phrases are the basis of our family unity, and will persist as long as we are in the world, recreated and revived, in disparate places on the earth whenever one of us says, most eminent, Signor Lippmann, and we immediately hear my father's impatient voice ringing in our ears. Enough of that story. I've heard it far too many times already. It's beautiful.

The thing is, John, so Ginsberg translated Proust into Italian and there's a character in Family Lexicon who is an enthusiastic reader of Proust into Italian and there's a character in Family Lexicon who is an enthusiastic reader of Proust and in a way she's using the phrase those lexicon of phrases are a kind of Proustian

exercise aren't they? They're unlocking a world via a single thing not the Madeleine in this case, but phrases. I really like the translation family lexicon rather than family sayings. Yeah. I think it's closer to the Italian, lexical. And actually, whenever there's a word that seems really interesting,

like that lexicon, I go to this great website called Etim Online. I don't know if you know it. Indeed I do. Many hours wasted on there. Anyway, the root of lexicon, the Proto-Indo-European root, is lege, L-E-G, which I was fascinated to learn means um to collect or gather and the derivative of this is to speak which seems like such a leap and it's because it comes from this idea of picking out words sort of gathering words meaning to speak And I felt that that was exactly what happens in this book. She kind of gathers the words.

She kind of harvests these things. That's lovely. And I just thought lexicon totally got that. John, could I ask you stylistically, like reading this book isn't like watching a dolmio advert is it it's like it's uh it's um it's more it's more uh austere yeah that's it's it's definitely northern italian and it's set in turin so it's very urban it it it's interesting that there is a proustian quality to it that that you know that the threads of memory are kind of what,

and names, there's lots and lots of names threaded through the book. I mean, if you wanted to look at it this way, it gives you a kind of a pen portrait of the whole of the kind of anti-fascist movement in Italy over the sort of space of half a century. But that's not how it presents itself. It presents itself. I love the idea of gathering, of a collection of stories. I mean, I was thinking about this afternoon, it doesn't really go anywhere. I mean, there's no grand kind of

conclusion to the book. There's an amazing little bit, just a tiny little passage, which I read today, which made me, again, really made me think about where we are now. Very occasionally, she starts to reflect on something more profound, but she does it in such a light and completely kind of authentic way. It's just a few lines. So she says, we thought the war would immediately

turn everyone's lives upside down. Instead, for years, many people remained at home, unaffected, continuing to do what they'd always done. Then just when everyone thought they'd managed to survive with what little there was to go around, that they weren't going to be all sorts of upheavals, that homes wouldn't be destroyed and people wouldn't have to flee or be persecuted,

bombs and mines suddenly exploded everywhere, buildings collapsed, and the streets were full of rubbles, soldiers and refugees. Soon no one was left who could pretend it wasn't happening, who could close their eyes, plug their ears, and hide their heads under a pillow. Those people were all gone. This is what the war was like in Italy.

That's it. That's what the war... You feel... This is what the war was like in Italy. What a sentence to be able to write. I know. That is brave. That's a very brave writer or masterful writer who's able to do that.

That thing of things turning in an instant. You think you're going to be fine and then you're not fine. And there's an amazing kind of optimism in the book, isn't there? I like you, Marigold. I find the book incredibly moving. But funny too, Marigold. Yeah, very funny. Funny though, right? Funny, funnyigold. Yeah, very funny. And I love that the end. Funny though, right?

Funny, funny. Yeah, I think it's really funny. Hilarious. I mean, the shades, I mean, obviously it's not my family and other animals, but there is, I think it's, you know. That's very good. There's a distant relative. It's that kind of, there is an air of shambolic family

and they're all having huge like quite alarming sounding fights and everything the father's so funny but the mother is as well and the whole novel feels like a texture of a family and i love that the ending we kind of suddenly i had to check i hadn't missed a page yes because you just you leave them in the middle of one of the classic arguments or kind of batting around of jokes. And it's perfect and very funny. I think that's exactly right, Marigold. What I love about the way she's written this is that although in the extract you read out and, you know, she talks about it being their Latinin this way of um their own language it feeling

it kind of risks sounding quite exclusive it's actually an incredibly welcoming book you don't feel that you're left out you're just there at the table kind of eating it all up you're so in there and i think it it's sometimes being compared to the garden of the Finzi-Contini. Yeah. Who's that by? That's by Bassani, Giorgio Bassani. And who I think, was she friends with him? They're certainly in the same kind of scene, weren't they? They're the family, the Finzi-Contini family.

Again, it's the same, you know, during the war. They make their own language up as well. Finzi-Contini-esque or something. But there it feels very exclusive. It feels like they're keeping everyone out of their walled garden, the walled city, whereas here everyone's welcomed in. It's very interesting, though, isn't it? Because Ginsburg, in terms of Ginsburg's biography,

she's tremendously well-connected. It's quite a stunt to pull off the idea that you're just reading about normal people when what she's talking about are the Italian elite of that era, the literary and media elite of that era. These people, the Olivettis who wander into the picture and Cesare Pavese happens to wander through. And you think, well, wait a minute, that's a really famous person who's joining us at the table, right?

Definitely. She wrote this, as it says on that blurb, when she was living in London in the late 50s and early 1960s. And there was a very particular trigger to the style in which this book is written. And we're going to hear the novelist Colm Toybein now tell us what that is. She has great command over style. She was fascinated by the work of Ivy Compton Burnett, as she must have been when she lived in England by figures like Catherine Mansfield, Elizabeth Bowen,

and indeed Muriel Spark, that some of the dialogue had that sort of clipped, witty tone. And so too in the way she will move characters very, very fast from one emotion to another without much explanation. It's very dramatic. It's very funny and it's very readable. Yeah. I mean, I found that revelatory.

She lived in South Kensington. Did you know that? She lived in walking distance of the V&A. She went into a local bookshop where she discovered the novels of Ivy Compton Burnett, A House in Its Head, Mother and Son, Parents and Children. And she became obsessed with the style of Ivy Compton Burnett. And she used to, John, she used to, when she left her house and wandered the streets of South Kensington, she would fantasize about bumping into Ivy Compton Burnett, who she knew lived nearby. I love it.

So that she could invite her to dinner and share her particular wit and sense of dialogue. But that's such... You would never see that, would you? In the plainness of her style does not suggest the highly affected nature of Ivy Compton Burnett's prose. But they both use dialogue.

They're both very... They let dialogue carry character. I think also the flip side of being so brilliant with dialogue is she's also so good at um the silences um and the things that aren't said the bit where that really felt is the beginning of voices the should i read this out voices in the evening yeah do it it's um another of her novels um it's the one before family yeah so just read just the beginning bit and again you really get a feeling of voice here my mother said i feel a kind of lump in my throat it hurts if i swallow she said good evening general general sartorio had passed us raising his hat above his silvery

waved hair a monocle in his eye, and his dog on a lead. My mother said, what a fine head of hair he has at that age. She said, did you notice how ugly the dog has become? I have a kind of vinegary taste in my mouth now, and that lump hurts me all the time. However, did he

discover that I have high blood pressure and has always been low with me, always? She said, good evening, Gigi. General Sartorius' son had passed us with his white Montgomery over his shoulders. He was supporting on one arm a salad bowl covered with a napkin. The other arm was in plaster of Paris and in a sling. He had a really horrid fall. I wonder if he will ever recover the full use of his arm, said my mother. She said, I wonder what he had got in that bowl. One can see that there is a party somewhere, she added, at the Terenzi's, very likely.

Everyone who goes has to take something. Nowadays, many people do that. She said, but they don't invite you, do they? They don't invite you, she said, because they think that you give yourself airs. You've never been to the tennis club either. If one does not go about and show oneself, people say that such a person is giving himself airs and they don't seek one out anymore she said and it goes on and on and on yeah until finally he says what wife i said and you realize all that time the narrator hasn't said anything the mother's just been going on and it's completely ridiculous. So she gets that,

never has she said been said so much. You know? I read that novel this weekend and it's not long, but I kept having to take little breaks in it because the bombardment of dialogue and characters, that's a thing Marigold, isn't it, as well? She's like...

You have to be on point, I think. Like with Muriel Spark, John. You have to be paying attention. It'd be quite easy to slide past it. Although I also think in Family Lexan, actually, that's part of the joy. It is a bit like... My mother is very prone to a shaggy dog story and sometimes she

talks about characters as though you've known them all your life and you're like I've never heard of this person but you know what I'm just going to go with it let's just go with where this is taking me and I think that's the joy of Family Lexicon is that the intellectuals of the age are given the same amount of time on stage as the brilliant housemaids i mean she's so brilliant at a comic sketch she gets she knows exactly what phrase to give you or what little detail of their physical appearance to instantly give you that little sketch that gives you so much life of that person but actually it's kind of fine if you then forgotten who they are because there's going to be another one for you to um laugh at or laugh with quite soon and i just love i love that that

you after a while you you it's an amazing thing you start to feel like you are part of this family you kind of you know when barbizon comes up again in the story you say oh i remember that from earlier and i just and i loads of stuff it just made me think about things my ridiculous things my mother would used to say, you know, like, oh, you can tell he's a dentist. Look at the size of his wrists. I mean, it's just that it captures that kind of that sort of family surrealism, casual family surrealism better than almost any book I've ever read, I think. in almost any book I've ever read, I think. But I would also say that she is a more challenging and experimental writer than she perhaps seems at first. The idea of what's going on on the surface is one thing,

but then the depths are pretty deep underneath that. And there's a kind of affect to the style which... It's a good trick to pull off how do you make so warm a style which is so superficially standoffish that's what I feel about her I feel there's so much precision in the choice of character detail as you were talking about Marigold or Emily as you were saying with dialogue because actually what she's doing she's stepping back from herself as narrator it's a very interesting technique I think and I think

that's one of the things that maybe appeals to contemporary readers as well I have a little quote here from a writer called Sally Rooney yeah I I mean, she's an up-and-coming voice. An exciting new voice, John would call her. That's exactly what I was going to say. And she says this, and she mentions Ginsburg in

her last novel, Sally Rooney. And this is what she says about Ginsburg here. She says, when I first read Natalia Ginsberg's work several years ago, I felt as if I were reading something that had been written for me, something that had been written almost inside my own head or heart. I was astonished that I had never encountered Ginsberg's work before, that no one knowing me had ever told me about her books.

It was as if her writing was a very important secret that I had been waiting all my life to discover. Far more than anything I myself had ever written or even tried to write, her words seemed to express something completely true about my experience of living and about life itself. This kind of transformative encounter with a book is for me very rare, a moment of contact with what seems to be

the essence of human existence. Wow. I mean, I imagine the estate of Natalia Ginsberg is jumping up and down with delight. That blurb. But that is such a good description from Sally Rooney there about how one feels about those special writers,

those golden writers. What do you think it is? I just ask you in general, all of you, what is it? I come back to this thing. What is it that is speaking to people now? You know, Natalia Ginsburg

has been in print in English on and off for 60 years. But this is her moment. And I'm fascinated as to why this is her moment and why she speaks to readers now. Why are more people reading her? I thought, I like the space in it, the simplicity of it. And it wasn't, there wasn't, there's not too much color there's just everything you need nothing else how would you describe this marigold it's not an autobiography

what is it i mean an autobiographical novel yeah yeah let's cop out it's auto fiction before auto fiction had been invented william trevor reviewed this novel when it was first published in English in the 60s. And William Trevor said he reviews it with, get this, Speak Memory by Volokhov. And he says in both cases they are memoirs that bring the novelist's arsenal to bear. There are memoirs written by novelists where novelists do not deprive themselves of the skills that they've learned. And Ginsburg in this preface to The Family Lexicon says,

the places, events and people in this book are real. I haven't invented a thing. And each time I found myself slipping into my long-held habits as a novelist and made something up, I was quickly compelled to destroy the invention. But I think that's a double bluff. I don't think she made stuff up, but I think, Nicky, how is she making it sing?

She's leaving stuff out. You know, she's doing what novelists do. I think there's such a vitality to the language and it feels like such a happy, I mean it's kind of paradoxical isn't it because this awful thing, awful political turbulence is going on but the sort of family life feels so happy and alive and you know it's interesting that she wrote it when she was in London looking back, there's a

nostalgia for this lost time, this kind of innocent past in a way or maybe it was the moment that innocence was lost And so little about the war though, right? So little about the war. The death of Mussolini is just kind of tossed off in one phrase.

It's amazing. Mussolini had died. And in any other novel, that would be a momentous moment, particularly the father's so anti-Mussolini, you would expect them all to be hearing the news for the first time. And as an editor, I probably would have been like, tell us more. How did you feel?

And instead she was like, Mussolini had died. And I think one of the most astonishing books for me about this novel is how her husband is murdered. Yeah, horribly. And you don't, you're not allowed into her heart about that. She just literally says, they arrested him 20 days after arrival and I never saw him again. Yeah.

I can't actually barely say that without crying. She does it in two sentences. sentences she thought they were going to start a new life in rome and she said i arrived feeling positive i don't quite know why and then as you say 20 days ago she's this there's one little thing that she says that i was that sort of nagged at me which which you know she's too good a writer to give you a philosophy as it were um in any anything other than the most oblique way but there's a bit towards the middle of the book where she's she took she talks briefly about that what you know the post-war kind of the illusory moment of shared existence. She says, certainly for many years,

no one worked to the job they planned on and trained for, everybody believing that they could and must do a thousand jobs all at once. And much time passed before everyone took back on his shoulders, his profession and accepted the burden, the exhaustion and the loneliness of the daily grind, which is the only way we have of participating in each other's lives, each of us lost and trapped in our own parallel solitude. I thought, wow, that is...

Wow. That's, yeah, that's sort of the melancholy. There is melancholy at the heart of the book, but she doesn't let that dominate the narrative. It's extraordinary, extraordinary writing. Well, listen, I think we should hear from Natalia Ginsberg. She's been in the other room all this whole time. So this is a clip from, it's in Italian, everybody,

so you can more or less work out most of what she's saying, but she's actually talking about family lexicon. And she's on an Italian arts programme in 1964. So I left the theme music in. It's very evocative and the opening question. So here it is, Natalia Ginsberg talking about family lexicon in 1964. And if she says something offensive, we don't actually know exactly what she's talking about. Nel suo ultimo libro, Lessico Familiare, gli avvenimenti sono osservati e descritti dal

punto di vista, come dire, di una ragazzina. Questo punto di vista non sembra modificarsi sostanzialmente nonostante il passare degli anni. Cosa può dirci a questo proposito? Il mio libro Lessico familiare non è un'autobiografia, è un libro che racconta le persone della mia vita, non la mia vita. Io intendevo non essere un personaggio in questo libro, intendevo essere semplicemente un testimone. Quindi il mio personaggio io l'ho ignorato quasi, sta nell'ombra, io ho detto quasi nulla di me. Non so, potrei dire, non so, ad esempio Rabelais o Stendhal, scrittori come Rabelais o Stendhal, sono degli scrittori estremamente felici perché la loro fantasia si muove libera, è un mondo che si muove, è una fantasia piena di vitalità e di sangue e invece non so se facciamo un esempio proprio nostro, contemporaneo, ad esempio il libro uscito adesso di Giuseppe Berto, Il male oscuro, è un libro che è testimonianza di una profonda infelicità

perché lui non alza mai gli occhi da sé, ora non è che faccio nessun apprezzamento di valori, voglio solo dire che c'è un rischio nell'una e nell'altra, nell'una e nell'altra, nell'uno e nell'altro stato d'animo c'è un rischio. Penso che sia bellissimo. Ho capito Stendhal and autobiographer. I think probably that translates. It's a book about people, not about her. It's not an autobiography. That's really interesting. People in my life, not my life. It's the story of people in my life, not the story of my life.

So I'd like to ask Marigold, Emily was talking earlier about how hard it is to get review coverage for republished books. Maybe you weren't privy to these conversations, but do you think the success of Elena Ferrante had anything to do with Daunt's decision to repromote? I mean, it's not like these were newly commissioned translations for the most part. I know some of them are, but they've hoovered up things which were originally published in the 60s, 70s and 80s and presented it as a list. And I wonder whether readers' enthusiasm for Ferranti fever. Absolutely. I'm sure that must have played a part. And actually, I think the success of the Ferranti novels will have played into the courage of publishers to buy other books in translation, not just Italian novels. I think it showed a willingness in the public to read novels in translation. And so, of course, it helped that it was a woman writing about Italy in that particular era. writing about Ishley in that particular era. So there was that similarity,

but also just writer after writer keeps on coming out as a fan of Ginsburg. It's very helpful. I mean, we've heard from Colin Toye being Anne Sally Rooney and... Rachel Cusk. Rachel Cusk and... Tessa Hadley. ...Claire Louise Bennett, Tessa Hadley.

I mean, it's top table people. And Dawn's bringing back all our yesterdays in the summer, aren't they? Yeah, which is, I'm not just saying this, it's really one of my favourites because I'm deeply sentimental. As it's become apparent, given I've always cried twice, but it's all about how to be good. And so right now, like, what is more important than a novel about community?

Emily, why do you think, I mean, you're a former bookseller amongst your various hats. Do you think Ferrante had anything to do with why people are reading Ginsberg now? Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. And I mean, you know, the UK is famously rubbish at reading and translation, but it is improving. I suppose I have always enjoyed reading and translation and increasingly so, perhaps because in part of the feeling of claustrophobia that has descended through Brexit, the lockdowns. You know, for me personally, personally also having children young children makes you know your world can feel quite small can i just say as well it's actually one of my very favorite things about the book world um that for all my complaining about and frustration with the

public that um paradoxically it's the public who make it so interesting. It's the public's decision that they want to read these things, regardless of what publishers put in front of them. They decide what they want to read. And the truth of it is, you know, Daunt or Penguin or NYRB or whoever can put things into shops, but it's the public who decide if they want to read it or not. And this upswing, this upsurge in interest in translated fiction,

I mean, John, you worked for, were a publisher at Harville for many years, who were one of the pioneering publishers in the UK for fiction in translation. It feels like a different landscape now. I think it does, and I think there is something that Eleanor Ferranti and the fact that more women are being translated, I think, is...

I mean, there were always women on the Harville list, but it definitely feels like there's been a sea change. It does feel to me like these stories, they really, really don't feel dated at all. You don't feel like you're reading, you know, 1960s fiction. You feel like you're reading something that is so beautifully wrought and clear, it's sort of timeless.

I think the thing that's so interesting about her is this, for me, is the alchemy of the relationship between the author, the publisher, the backlist, the public, reviewers, right? Natalia Ginsberg's work has been available in English in various versions for 60 years but it's a particularly interesting combination of factors that has brought her to the fore in the last few years she was a I mean she had a she had plays at the old Vic in the 60s it's not like she was obscure she She wasn't. She was a leading Italian cultural figure and was seen as such by other countries at the time. But nevertheless,

the last few years, changes in what people want to read, publishers' abilities to put it in front of them. It's sort of magical. And's the thing, and you can't control it, and you can't predict it. The credit really lies with Natalia Ginsberg, not in any of us or any of our publishers or readers or anything. It's the work. The work will find its level eventually,

and it's a wonderful thing. I'm afraid that's where we must leave the large unforgettable Levy family huge thanks to Emily and Marigold for introducing us to the intricacy and beauty of Natalia Ginsberg's work to Nicky Birch for making us sound like we're really all in the same room and to Unbound for making a bordello out of everything you can download all

161 previous episodes of Backlisted plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website all 161 previous episodes of Backlisted. Plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website at backlisted.fm. And we're always pleased if you contact us on Twitter and Facebook and now in sound and pictures on Instagram too.

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Thank you to all our patrons for enabling us to continue to do what we love doing Marigold and Emily thank you so much for joining us this has been glorious, thoroughly enjoyed it Emily, is there anything you would like to add

any last message you would like to leave for the descendants of Natalia Ginsberg about their forebear or anything you want to recommend to listeners Gosh I loved this book of hers The Little Virtues is something i'm going to read

again and again and again she's so wise in it and so wise about um food and parenting and all sorts of other things i would also recommend her novel the dry heart and the road to the city which um again again they're very short but they're sort of like bullets. You know, they really hit home. And actually, I recently came across a really brilliant Italian book called A Girl Returns by Donatella Di Pietrantonio. It's published by Europa, who also publish Peranti. it's published by Europa who also publish um Peranti um I also reviewed it for the Guardian but it's it's again a sort of slim beautiful novel that really captures something special about Italy I think which you know you might want to continue reading with yeah pen pen and

piece of paper everybody and Marigold Atkey the human being behind the publishing professional. What would you like to leave us with? Is there anything we didn't say or anything you would like to say about Natalia Ginzburg? I think actually Emily touched on it briefly there, but I think Natalia Ginzburg writes brilliantly on motherhood. I'm not a mother and I have no intention of being a mother. But I find it immensely reassuring to find these voices being very pragmatic about their children, finding a relief to escape from them, but also loving them nonetheless.

There's mothers in all shapes and forms in Natalia Ginsberg's writing. I think The Dry Heart is a very good gateway drug to Ginsberg. It starts off with a bang and it's short sharp and delicious and nasty john i feel i i've read half a dozen books by natalia ginsburg and from various points in her career i really loved this one that you chose and i really love the little virtues but i'd like to make a call out for a couple of novellas published by NYRB called Valentino and Sagittarius. Sagittarius particularly is hilarious and mean in a way

that Ginsberg, I think, doesn't do later in her career. I really enjoyed that. It was a very, very good book. Johnny, is there anything you would like to add? Just to say, for people who are interested to actually see and listen to Natalia Ginsberg she plays the woman who anoints Jesus with expensive perfume and gets told

off in Pasolini's Gospel according to St Matthew which I watched this Easter I always watch it every Easter it's a beautiful moving film but it's not until this Easter that I made the connection that the Natalia Ginsberg in that was the Natalia Ginsberg that we were preparing a podcast for.

So I'll put a link in on the website for the film for those of you. Well, thanks, everyone. We've thoroughly enjoyed this today. For once, listeners, there's loads of this writer's books available all over the world. So you can just go and get them or borrow them or read them or whatever. So anyway, John,

see you next time. Yeah, see you. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thanks ever so much. Thanks for having us on. See you. Bye. Bye. So I've just seen Marigold. It's seven miles from Peckham to Kentish Town. That's quite good. Do you know, I think my route is longer, just not to be a stickler.

I'm impressed you did that in 35 minutes. On that, I think on that occasion, I, yeah, maybe did jump a few red lights. I don't know. If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books,

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