All Our Yesterdays

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The great emotional power of this novel springs from the depth and truth of each one of its characters.

At forty-seven, Cenzo Rena seems like an unlikely match for Anna, but he is kind, thoughtful and generous – qualities to be admired irrespective of his appearance. In the post-war world, some form of emptiness also gnaws at these survivors, who otherwise used to rebellions, revolutions, and political turmoil, must navigate a welcome but substantially altered and unknown era of peace.If Braun seems to have no regret about the horrors he enacted, he is at least traumatised by the deaths of his wife and child, who were killed in Operation Gomorrah, the allied bombing of Hamburg in July 1943. Earlier, when she watched her elder siblings and their friends become involved in the resistance to fascism, she found herself fantasising about revolution: she ‘pictured herself upon the barricades … firing off a rifle and singing. Good to know you are reading Italian WWII books too, there are many aspects of the Italian perspective on this particular period that were unknown to me so it has made for fascinating reading. Ginzburg has written a truly remarkable novel here, a story of ordinary people living through extraordinary times, beautifully told with a warmth and generosity of spirit that reflects the Italian character. Por momentos la mirada se pone en otro de los varios personajes que aparecen en su vida, en general con perfiles más llamativos, pero todo gira en torno a Anna.

ive been wanting to get into more italian literature in translation ever since reading elena ferrante and natalia ginzburg sounds like the perfect author to explore!As you say, I suspect it’s in a similar league to All Our Yesterdays with its broad scope and focus on family dynamics. Ginzburg, especially, is turning out to be another favourite author and I’ve read and throughly enjoyed her books – Family Lexicon and The Dry Heart – in the past.

It begins in a small town in northern Italy, in the years before the war, with a family: an ageing widower, his four children and the family’s companion, Signora Maria. As Anna’s husband tells her: “No one found himself with courage ready-made, you had to acquire courage little by little, it was a long story and it went on almost all your life.Set against the backdrop of Italy between 1939 to 1944 - the months of anxiety before the country entered the war through to the tension following the Allied victory - "All Our Yesterdays" follows the lives of two families during the period of great turbulence. Over time, a friendship develops between Anna and Emanuele’s younger brother, Giuma, a rather arrogant, insensitive boy who seems more interested in himself than anyone around him. The war ended a year later, when Ginzburg was still in her 20s, a widowed mother of three small children. As readers we grow to know and love Anna deeply, but we cannot help loving at the same time her cantankerous father, her sombre and beautiful brother Ippolito, the fretting Signora Maria and all the other complex and interesting people that populate the world of the book. Yet in the early years the war is not yet all-consuming and they even go off for their usual summer vacations.

As you say, it’s fascinating to see how some elements relate to Ginzburg’s own life experiences, especially the upheaval of war and its impact on family life. At sixteen, Anna finds herself pregnant by Giuma, who subsequently abandons her with a 1000-lire note, sufficient money to cover an underground abortion. The landlady sends the towels ‘all scorched’ to Anna’s sister, Concettina, along with a letter informing her of Signora Maria’s demise. This is a moment of history as lived by ordinary people who are made extraordinary by circumstances. But even now the style remains sober and business-like, in a continuous stream of relatively short sentences, descriptive, without dialogues, and again with subdued emotion; not even when really dramatic things happen towards the end of the war.My family didn’t experience invasion, despite living in fear of it for a good part of the war, and this represents another fundamental difference between them and Ginzburg’s characters. San Costanzo receives four Jewish internees under this initiative – three old women and a Turkish Jew, who ultimately becomes Cenzo Rena’s friend.