Among Women Only is the first book I’ve read from Cesare Pavese but it definitely won’t be the last. This little book impressed me in so many ways. It deals with events in ordinary lives in an elegant way. While reading the book, I looked back at my life as if Pavese wrote it. I thought it would be a great novel. It is not that I have a great life, but that Pavese is such an influential writer.
In the background, there is Italy; and we have “different” women that we can call “one of us” in the leading roles. We read what and how people have been dealing with and how they have coped with these lives. We see them all through the eyes of Rosetta, who came to her childhood neighbourhood years later. Rosetta’s observations, behaviours, thoughts may be too familiar or absolutely foreign to you, but as a reader, you will see how different we all are. Pavese explains people, especially women, very well. You will love the simplicity of his narrative and the humanity in each of his characters. Read soon and enjoy!
Among Women Only
Published just months before the author’s suicide in 1950, Among Women Only has since become one of Pavese’s most sought-after novels. In this classic, a successful couturier returns to Turin, the city in which she grew up, at the end of World War II. Opening a salon of her own leads her into a nihilistic circle of young hedonists, including the charismatic Rosetta, whose tragic death forms the novel’s climax. But Turin itself is at the heart of the story, its pervading melancholy deftly rendered by a master craftsman.
Cesare Pavese
Cesare Pavese was an Italian novelist, poet, short-story writer, translator and literary critic.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
