Family Lexicon, by Natalia Ginzburg

As I've mentioned before, I have found lots of good books at the thrift shop by my office, but there have been a handful that are particularly unexpected and which I can't help but think must have been donated by the same person who shares some particular interests with me. Among these is Family Lexicon, by Natalia Ginzburg and an Italian edition of La notte dell'oblio, by the Italian Jewish writer Lia Levi. (I also found an Italian edition of Leonardo Sciacia's A ciascuno il suo there, which I was thrilled to find because I have the English language edition and so I can do a side-by-side reading, and a couple other Italian books -- I wonder whose they were?) In any case, I wasn't familiar with Natalia Ginzburg, but it was a New York Review of Books edition and sounded like something I'd enjoy, so I picked it up. Family Lexicon is something of a memoir of Ginzburg's family life from her early childhood in the 19-teens and 20s through about the 1950s. It's organized more anecdotally or by characters than chronologically, but it beautifully recounts Jewish life and anti-fascism in Italy during the 20s, 30s, and 40s. One of the odd things about this book is that, while it is telling true stories about real people (as is amply demonstrated in the notes section of the book, which provides little bios of nearly all the characters in Ginzburg's life and circle, many of whom are well-known figures), it is almost not at all about Ginzburg herself, which is why I called it "something of" a memoir. The reader learns all about her family members and people in her social circle, who are described in lovely, humorous detail. Toward the end we learn a little more about Ginzburg herself, who was exiled to a village in the south of Italy by Mussolini's government, fled the village for Rome with her 3 small children after the German occupation in a German truck with a faked identity and story of lost papers, and lived through so much more, and yet it's all touched on very lightly in the book. Family Lexicon was wonderful, but I'd love to read a memoir of more of Ginzburg's own experiences.