The Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement: 'I shot him between the eyes.' As the tale - a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness, desperation, and revenge - proceeds, the narrator's murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability.

Stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality, Natalia Ginzburg's writing here is white-hot, tempered by rage. She transforms the unhappy tale of an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that seems to beg the question: why don't more wives kill their husbands?