Forbidden Notebook

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The absorbing and abidingly resonant confession of a woman's desire to do that most elusive thing: forge a self apart from her caring for others. Forbidden Notebook can also be read as an allegory of fascism, a post-Roe cautionary tale, and corroboration of the revelatory and exhilarating but also implosive power of honest words."

When Goldstein finally got hold of a copy of Forbidden Notebook – published in Italian as Quaderno Proibito – she was enthralled. "It was just stunning in how modern it seems to me," she says. "The things that she discovers, she sees, it's what we all struggle with still, and that was a little alarming. Immediately you're just so pulled into it and engaged, it's just amazing. I just feel like everybody should read this book." But reading 'The Forbidden Notebook' there is no way you could have guessed this biography, because actually it is a very small and intimate diary by a 43-year old mother who is struggling with getting older, with an empty nest syndrome, jealousy of her younger daughter, and hidden feelings of passion. From the first day she has the notebook in her home, she no longer feels safe, her husband, or one of her children might find it. She realises there is no place in her home that is private to her. It is impossible not to be impressed by this important and beautifully translated book, as well as by de Céspedes’s masterful handling of so many complex interpersonal and existential subjects.”Join Book Club: Delivered to your inbox every Friday, a selection of publishing news, literary observations, poetry recommendations and more from Book World writer Ron Charles. Sign up for the newsletter. She’s sure her family would laugh at her so she ‘hides’ it. ….constantly finding new hiding places in their family cramped in their small apartment.

But this is not simplistic in any way. It emerges that Valeria struggles with her own internalised misogynistic and patriarchal values and it's only gradually, through the analysis that the space of writing affords her, that she starts to come to terms with her life and its fixed parameters. This is as much about bourgeois values, about the limitations caused by money worries, about inter-generational tensions, about what happens in a long-term marriage when love and desire become domesticated and overcome by the pressures of parenthood in a tiny apartment, as it is about the life of a woman. There’s a long tradition of fiction wrestling with mid-twentieth-century middle-class anomie, and it’s in this context that Alba de Céspedes’s TheForbidden Notebook can be neatly situated. But there’s also something about this book that feels furtive, including the title and the conceit behind it—i.e., that this is the record of a frustrated woman who’s been writing her thoughts in secret. It’s the kind of lively narrative in which part of the writer’s compositional skill is creating that sense of unpredictability, and the novel is all the stronger for it.”

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A lost feminist classic to rival Penelope Mortimer’s The Pumpkin Eater and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.” Sento tutto in me confusamente e non posso parlarne a mia madre né a mia figlia perché nessuna delle due comprenderebbe. Appartengo a due mondi diversi: l'uno che è finito con quel tempo, l'altro che è nato da esso. E in me questi due mondi si scontrano, facendomi gemere. Forse è per questo che spesso mi sento priva di qualsiasi consistenza. Forse io sono solo questo passaggio, questo scontro.»Nei momenti in cui la donna annota le discussioni con Mirella, e le successive considerazioni, è possibile scorgere una profonda spaccatura tanto sul piano sociale quanto su quello generazionale. Si percepisce proprio una lucida consapevolezza che si fa strada nella sua mente e il diario si trasla in una vera e propria autoanalisi della sua vita. Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes (translated by Ann Goldstein ) has just been reissued by Pushkin Press. My life always appeared rather insignificant, without remarkable events, apart from my marriage and the birth of the children. Instead, ever since I happened to start keeping a diary, I seem to have discovered that a word or an intonation can be just as important, or even more, than the facts we’re accustomed to consider important. If we can learn to understand the smallest things that happen every day, then maybe we can learn to truly understand the secret meaning of life. But I don’t know if it’s a good thing, I’m afraid not.” Astounding . . . Forbidden Notebook does not feel 71 years old. Its prose is fresh and lively, and the issues it raises more contemporary than many would hope."