THE THINGS WE USED TO SAY

A graceful new translation of the celebrated Italian author’s 1963 autobiographical novel, which previously appeared in English under the title Family Sayings. This crisply intelligent, emotionally taut portrayal of a Turin family—through the first stirrings of Fascism, then WWII and its aftermath’surveys with masterly economy the interrelationships, thoughts, and idiosyncratic catchphrases (denoted by Ginzburg’s title) of its narrator, her four siblings, and especially their almost operatically articulate, ebullient parents. The ritualistic little world thus self-created comprises both a buffer against the terrors that surround them and their elders’ blithe denial of war’s reality. Ginzburg balances such contrasts expertly, in a compact, compulsively readable saga that offers a perfect introduction to her wry, subtle realistic fiction.