The Dry Heart

by Natalia Ginzburg

Frances Frenaye (Translator)

The Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement: “I shot him between the eyes.” As the tale—a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness, desperation, and bitterness—proceeds, the narrator's murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability. Stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality, Natalia Ginzburg's writing here is white-hot, tempered by rage. She transforms the unhappy tale of an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that seems to beg the question: why don't more wives kill their husbands?

• ISBN10: 0811228789
• ISBN13: 9780811228787
• Publish Date: 9 July 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 96
• Language: English

Reviews

[kerrydarkeyes]

Such an odd little book but it would make a great indie film. I think every character in this book is dissatisfied with their own existence and relationships but incapable, unwilling, or too repressed by social expectations, to find an alternative.