Finally back in print, a frighteningly lucid feminist horror story about marriage The Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement, 'I shot him between the eyes.' Everything in between is a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness, desperation, and bitterness, and as the tale proceeds, the narrator's murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability. In this powerful novella, Natalia Ginzburg's writing is white-hot, fueled by rage, stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality; she transforms an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that might pose the question: Why don't more wives kill their husbands?
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