Later It’s two in the morning. I got up to write: I can’t sleep. Yet again it’s the fault of this notebook. Before, I’d immediately forget what happened at home; now, instead, since I began to write down daily events, I hold on to them in my memory and try to understand why they occurred. If it’s true that the hidden presence of this notebook gives

Forbidden Notebook could also be read as a book of encouragement: encouragement to dig deeply, in the Ferrantian sense, into one’s self and one’s relations with other people. It’s not an easy process—starting with finding the time and the space, the privacy to do it—and Valeria is constantly vowing to stop: to stop writing and get rid of the diary,

They ate sweets, took compacts out of their purses, ingenious new lighters. Margherita had the same expression on her face as when, in class, she managed to pass from one desk to the next a caricature of the nun teaching. If her husband had unexpectedly come in, she would have blushed as she had the day the nun discovered her and sent her out of th

Anyway, I’m forty-three, and it seems embarrassing to resort to childish subterfuge in order to write in a notebook. So I absolutely have to confess to Michele and the children the existence of this diary and assert my right to shut myself in a room to write when I want to. I acted foolishly from the start and if I continue I’ll aggravate the impre

If I sometimes say “I don’t feel well,” Michele and the children fall into a brief, respectful, awkward silence. Then I get up, return to doing what I must. No one makes a move to help me, but Michele cries, “Look, you say you don’t feel well and you’re not still for a moment.”

Riccardo, taking my chin in his fingers, asked tenderly, “Tell me, what do you want to write in your diary?” Suddenly, I burst into tears. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me, except a great weariness. Seeing me cry, Riccardo turned pale and put his arms around me, saying, “I was joking, mammetta, don’t you see I was joking? I’m sorry …” The

They were very entertaining—it was like watching magic tricks. Both she and Camilla talked about their husbands the way we talked about the sisters at school, revealing how cleverly they’d deceived them, even if they had innocent motives such as buying a dress or choosing where to spend a vacation. Giacinta claimed she’d managed to make her husband

I belong to a generation that isn’t ashamed of showing how tired we are. Whereas she seems never to allow herself a moment of surrender: from early morning she’s all dressed, as if ready to go out, all smooth, polished, powdered, her thin neck wrapped in a ribbon of ribbed silk. I looked at her yesterday, while I was working, bent over, slightly hu

The rooms are very small, but maybe for that reason it seemed to me that they embraced us more closely, gathered us into a single shell. I’d always thought, too, that in many ways—the most important ones—our family was more fortunate than others. In all these years Michele and I have never fought seriously, he has always worked, I found a job when