The Dry Heart

The Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement, "I shot him between the eyes." Everything in between is a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness, desperation, and bitterness--and as the tale proceeds, the narrator's murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability.
In this powerful novella, Natalia Ginzburg's writing is white-hot, fueled by rage, stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality; she transforms an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that might pose the question: why don't more wives kill their husbands?