Little Virtues

Little Virtues

• Used Book in Good Condition

€œAs far as the education of children is concerned,€ states Natalia Ginzburg in this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, €œI think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but a love of one€s neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.€ Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist rule; or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize. <br><br>€œA glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . Ginzburg€s magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning streak of a plain phrase. . . . As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart.€ €"<I>The New York Times Book Review</I>