3.5☆ — there is something about the quality of natalia ginzburg's writing and the way that she crafts characters that i like very much, everyone feels so real- we know these characters at their most pompous and at the height of their caustic tendencies, but also at their most dejected and vulnerable. my only complaints were that the writing in this book with regard to the flow of the plot felt like it was dragging at times, and the cast of the characters which increased by a lot considering the short span of time means that it would be easy to be confused when trying to remember about who was who.