Forbidden Notebook

Set in postwar Rome, this novel takes the form of a diary kept by Valeria Cossati, a forty-three-year-old wife, mother, and office worker, over six months from late November 1950 to late May 1951.

On a Sunday morning, Valeria impulsively buys a black school notebook from a tobacconist who warns her the sale is illegal on Sundays. She smuggles it home under her coat and throws it into the ragbag just before her nineteen-year-old daughter, Mirella, notices her flushed face. For weeks, Valeria moves the notebook from ragbag to old trunk to linen closet, unable to find a safe hiding place. She skims grocery money to buy soccer tickets and send her husband, Michele, a bank employee, and their children out so she can write. Yet she finds she has little to record beyond the struggle of concealment.

When Valeria raises the idea of keeping a diary at dinner, Michele, Mirella, and Valeria's twenty-two-year-old son, Riccardo, a law student, all laugh. Riccardo teases her about having a secret admirer, and Valeria bursts into tears. Michele interprets her distress as maternal jealousy over Mirella's growing independence, gently assuring her that at their age they have no secrets. His grieved tone wounds her more than the words themselves.

Christmas Eve exposes the family's declining fortunes. Riccardo and Mirella are invited to a dance at the home of the wealthy Caprellis, but Michele's old tuxedo is far too tight for Riccardo. No friend or relative can lend a replacement, and Michele refuses to let Riccardo rent one, associating the idea with a loss of dignity. Valeria sends Mirella to the dance alone and tells Riccardo he must accept the situation. That night, Riccardo's sullen silence strikes Valeria as an accusation against his father for failing to prosper. She holds Michele's hand and privately recalls her many sacrifices: dismissing the nanny, then the maid, then finding a job herself. She reflects that the notebook has changed her. Before, she would have forgotten such incidents; now she examines them. She recognizes that her constant exhaustion has paradoxically become her sole contentment, and that her self-sacrifice functions as both genuine devotion and a martyrdom she is reluctant to surrender.

At a birthday tea with old schoolmates, Valeria confronts how far her life has diverged from theirs. Her friends display expensive clothing and jewelry, competing to prove their prosperity. When Valeria mentions that she works, an embarrassed silence falls. She understands that the unbridgeable gap between them is that she contributes financially to her own life and they do not.

Mirella begins coming home late at night. One evening she does not return until after midnight, dropped off by a large gray car that Riccardo identifies as belonging to Sandro Cantoni, a thirty-four-year-old lawyer. Confronted by Valeria, Mirella speaks with cold frankness: she is tired of poverty, she does not want a life like her parents', and she sees marriage as her one strategic advantage. She calls Michele a failure, then adds: "You're jealous."

Michele receives a raise and back pay, temporarily lifting the family's spirits. Valeria uses the money to buy Mirella a red coat, hoping to compete with Cantoni's expensive gifts, but a shopping trip forces her to confront how little the sum can buy. Soon after, Mirella takes a job at the office of Barilesi, a well-known criminal lawyer who is also Cantoni's superior. She begins earning her own salary and speaks with excitement about the dignity of work. She challenges her mother's belief that a woman's purpose is domestic service, leaving Valeria shaken by the recognition that Mirella has articulated something true about her own life.

Meanwhile, Michele secretly writes a movie screenplay during idle Saturday afternoons at the bank and enlists their friend Clara Poletti, a separated screenwriter, to help sell it. Clara finds the script interesting but too dark for cautious producers, and it is eventually rejected. Michele tells Valeria there is no more hope, and she promises not to tell the children.

Alongside these crises, Valeria's relationship with her office director begins to shift. The director, whom she comes to call Guido, has worked alongside her for years, paying her quiet attention she is only now beginning to notice. One Saturday in the deserted office, they work together in comfortable intimacy, and Guido confesses that the office is his refuge from an empty home life. On Holy Thursday, Guido declares his feelings. He tells Valeria he realized he loved her when she mentioned she might leave the job, and the prospect of losing her filled him with dread. Valeria whispers that she feels the same. They walk through crowded streets to a church, where he kisses her hand. Walking home alone, she whispers his name, and everything feels illuminated.

Guido proposes meeting Valeria in Venice for five days when she visits her Aunt Matilde in nearby Verona. Venice has been her cherished dream since her honeymoon with Michele over twenty years ago. She does not refuse. They begin meeting outside the office, though Valeria insists their relationship is "not possible." She recognizes that what she feels for Guido is fundamentally different from the affection, solidarity, and habit that define her marriage.

Cantoni visits Valeria's office unannounced. He explains that he is not wealthy, that he and Mirella have discovered their best selves together, and that he traveled to New York to arrange a divorce from his American wife. He asks Valeria not to be hostile, and she is shaken by his sincerity.

Then Riccardo delivers his own crisis. He confesses that his girlfriend, Marina, is pregnant and insists on marrying immediately, proposing that he and Marina move into his room and contribute his entire salary. Valeria is devastated, cataloguing her years of sacrifice. She falls asleep and dreams of Venice, a room on the Grand Canal, but is awakened by Mirella, to whom she blurts the news. Mirella responds with surprising tenderness. Valeria tells her: "Save yourself, you who can do it."

Valeria postpones the trip with Guido. Michele arranges a bank job for Riccardo and meets Marina's father, who appears oblivious to the pregnancy. Mirella announces she will move to Milan to work in Barilesi's new office, confirming her plans with Cantoni. She tells Valeria plainly that Riccardo will never leave home.

On a final Saturday in the empty office, Valeria tells Guido she loves him, the first time she has said it. Then she tells him they will never go away together. She explains that they would be prisoners everywhere, behind bars that exist not outside them but within. For her, love not validated by family remains a sin. Guido offers to leave his life entirely, but Valeria stops him. They walk along the river, then separate. She watches him walk away and feels her last chance at youth departing.

Alone on a Sunday, having sent the family to a soccer match with the same ruse she used the first day of the diary, Valeria takes the notebook from the ragbag. She reflects on how writing forced her to examine her life with painful clarity. She acknowledges that her self-sacrifice has been partly a means of accumulating a debt her family will have to repay, and that she risks becoming a bitter old woman. Yet she resolves to stay, to care for the coming grandchild, to let Mirella go. She decides to burn the notebook, writing that all women hide a forbidden diary and all must destroy it. She imagines Riccardo calling her a saint after her death, just as Michele once said of his own mother. Marina will never be able to deny it, because she will know nothing. In a few minutes, Valeria writes, only a faint odor of burning will linger in the air.