The Forbidden Notebook by Alba De Cespedes

I love diaries, fiction or non-fiction and I have tried to keep my own journals.  But the trouble is what if someone were to find my diary and read it?  It's probably every diary keeper's fear.  You want to write honestly about what you feel and how your life is going but that often requires writing about others and that's where it gets tricky.  

And that is the dilemma faced by Valeria Cossati the diary writer in Alba De Cespedes's excellent novel Forbidden Notebook (1952).  Valeria is 43 and living in Rome with her family in the early 1950's when Forbidden Notebook begins.  She is a wife and mother.  Her son and daughter are in their late teens.  Both Valeria and her husband Michele work outside the home but money is tight and so all four family members are living together in an apartment with not much privacy.  

Valeria has a full time job in an office but when she comes home another full time job awaits since she does the cooking and cleaning.  And so needing some space for herself Valeria decides one Sunday to buy a diary.  But from the moment she takes the diary home where to hide her journal preoccupies her thoughts.  And the more Valeria writes in her diary the more she questions whether buying it was a good idea: 

It’s two in the morning. I got up to write: I can’t sleep. Yet again it’s the fault of this notebook. Before, I’d immediately forget what happened at home; now, instead, since I began to write down daily events, I hold on to them in my memory and try to understand why they occurred. If it’s true that the hidden presence of this notebook gives a new flavor to my life, I have to acknowledge that it isn’t making it any happier. In the family you have to pretend not to notice what happens, or at least not to wonder about its meaning".

When I began reading Forbidden Notebook I was thinking that it wouldn't be the end of the world if Valeria's husband Michele or their childten Mirella and Riccardo found her journal.  Maybe they should learn that Valeria is a person in her own right and shouldn't be expected to always be at their beck and call.  But the deeper I got into the diary the more it became clear that no Valeria's diary cannot be shared with anyone.  Due to her diary writing she begins to take risks in her life that are not for anyone else's eyes.   The end of the novel is kind of sad but in hindsight it is the only decision Valeria could have made.

Thanks to Sam at Book Chase (please see the link under blogs I follow) for recommending Forbidden Notebook by Alba De Cespedes.  This novel is a gem, a neglected classic of 20th century Italian literature and beautifully translated by Ann Goldstein.  Forbidden Notebook will definitely be on my best books of 2024 list at the end of this year.