I’ve wanted to read Ginzburg for a while now (I’ve owned a copy of The Road To The City for a couple of years but never got around to it). With Backlisted doing Family Lexicon (yes, that podcast decides about 30% of my reading), I thought I’d start with that.

Technically, it’s a memoir, though Ginzburg tells us in the preparatory remarks that “even though the story is real, I think one should read it if were a novel, and therefore not demand of it any more or less than a novel can offer”. It’s an interesting take, ahead of time, because while Family Lexicon is shaped like fiction every character is real and every event occurred. It’s autofiction, 14 years before the term was coined by Serge Doubrovsky (who said similar things about his novel/memoir “Fils”).

Ginzburg tells the tale of an Italian family across three decades, starting just after WW1 and ending five years post-WW2. It just so happens that the family in question is hers. There’s her father, Giuseppe (“Beppino”), her mother, Lidia, and her siblings, Mario, Gino, Paola and Alberto. Ginzburg was the baby. From the very first page, we are given an unrefined blast of her father’s anger, who would regularly describe his children as “numbskulls”, “negroes”, and “jackassess” (the last one being his favourite). His anger is all fury and, as it would appear, very little bite. I’m not saying he didn’t frighten his loved ones, but Ginzburg frames Beppino more as a buffon than a tyrant. The man hated everything, whether it be music, the theatre, spending money, fascists — which, fair enough — marriage — every time his kids get married, he loses it — and cars. It’s extraordinary, given everything he experienced as a Jewish man during the height of fascism, that he didn’t keel over from a heart attack. But somehow, his righteous anger over the important and mundane sees Beppino and his wife Lidia (who often eggs him on) survive the darkest moments.

What’s fascinating in Family Lexicon is that Ginzburg has little interest in writing about herself. She is a passive observer of her family’s stories. Even the death of her husband during the War is kept at arm’s length. But the Family Lexicon is less a memoir and more a compendium of the tales that the family shared and re-shared, including a litany of phrases that would be thrown into every conversation. To put it another way, it is a Family Lexicon. This all resonated with me, partly because her parents reminded me of my paternal grandfather and grandmother, but mostly because my family also has a Lexicon: the stories we repeat and the phrases we share. 

The novel/memoir is frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and Ginzburg’s deadpan style only elevates this. But it also has darker moments where Ginzburg allows us to glimpse her vulnerability, especially when recounting her memories of her dear friend Cesare Pavese, who took his own life. (That section, late in the novel, is breathtaking.) 

The book is also a historical document in how it details how anti-fascists tried and failed to deal with fascism and the rise of Mussolini. Ginzburg’s father and siblings were jailed, with Mario escaping to France by the skin of his teeth. And yet, throughout all this, the Levis continue to share their stories and speak in their lexicon, even as darkness seeks to overwhelm them.