The Forbidden Notebook: A Novel

It's easy to see why Elena Ferrante used this book as inspiration for her own writing, so if you're a fan of HBO's My Brilliant Friend, you will love this book too, which I just had to stay up all night reading. The interior life of an Italian wife and mother comes alive in the diary she secretly keeps.

ust when it was what I was looking for! I had just finished "When Women Were Dragons" by Kelly Barnhill and I was looking for something more realistic to pair with it. This fit perfectly.This novel was first published in 1952 and is a post-war feminist exploration of womanhood at the time. The MC, Valeria, is struggling to equate the more traditional roles of feminity centering of domestic concerns and motherhood with the newer freedoms women were discovering in the post-WWII world. Valeria begins to jot down her inner thoughts in a notebook, making those thoughts more real and permanent. She laments often that had she not started writing her thoughts down, they would have been forgotten, let go, and she believes that might have been better. Valeria, in exploring her feelings, is becoming more and more dissatisfied with her life. The notebook causes her constant anxiety that someone (her husband, her children) might find it -- it is the first time she has had anything of her own, secret and unshared."When I write in this notebook, I feel I’m committing a serious sin, a sacrilege: it’s as if I were talking to the devil. ... I have to destroy the notebook, destroy the devil that hides in its pages"It is not a happy book and reminded me in many ways of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening." Valeria is in constant turbulance, both afraid of the new freedoms of the world and longing for the staid safety of traditional ways. She is a bridge, trapped in transitional limbo, stratling both shores, but able to dwell on neither.

A sophisticated novel for lovers of literature. A mirror held up to all of us. Riccardo, the son, feckless and cowardly. Then I remembered with embarrassment how I was at the same age. His younger sister, with all the self-centeredness of youth, but made of sterner stuff, facing the adult world with confidence and courage. The world weary husband, Michele, living for his nightly newspaper and Wagner recordings. But the book belongs to Valeria, an unassuming woman whose inner strength seeps from every page. I found myself rooting for her while willing to let fate decide her choice. Regardless of outcome, I would have found her equally worthy of esteem. Life is hard. We try to do our best. Amen. A magnificent book.

The translation here is a bit simple. The story had so much potential. I couldn’t put it down, only to be disappointed.

Brilliant read. So much inner depth capturing complex considerations around love, commitment, family, satisfaction, duty, dignity, and self-determination. This will long stay with me and challenge to live my own life on my own terms.