The Story of My Marriage Zenos Conscience

Written by Italo Svevo

Narrated by Deaver Brown

A remarkable history of one man, Zeno, his psychoanalysis, smoking addiction, philandering, love, hate, meanness, business life, family, and more told candidly & not so candidly by himself in a unique novel set in Europe in pre-World War 1 & in World War 1.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simply Magazine Inc.
• Release date: Jan 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781614966203

Reviews for The Story of My Marriage Zenos Conscience

[stillatim · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Someone needs to do a gigantic public service announcement and then create a computer virus that will delete all the sentences grouping this together with Ulysses and Proust and Woolf, all of whom are chiefly known for their formalism and prose.

This is Sterne in the late nineteenth century, no more, except with workmanlike prose, rather than Sterne's endlessly propulsive rush of words. The chapters go on for far too long, and although they're quite funny, that's really about all there is to it. The unreliability of the narrator doesn't make the book a modernist masterpiece; that's how comic novels (and, indeed, poems) have always worked.

Having said all that, it is genuinely funny, and some of the scenes have stayed with me far more strongly than I would have expected. I just don't to spend hours looking back through the book to find those bits again.

[jigarpatel-6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A self-conscious, comical hypochondriac charts his love and business life, which eventually intertwine. Given Svevo's own history, Zeon's Conscience can be compared to the Japanese I-novel. Note "conscience" in the title is meant in some archaic interpretation to mean "consciousness". There are infidelities, there are business mishaps. Ridiculous self-justifications abound. Too verbose and meandering for me to truly enjoy. Not in the class of Dostoevsky's The Idiot, but if you liked one you will probably like the other.

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked this because Zeno seemed more like a regular guy than just about anyone I've ever found in literature: mild, self-interested, inconsistent, given to dramatic gestures and hypocrisy, eager to be esteemed and loved and fairly lovable except when under duress. Says more about what I think a regular guy is than anything perhaps, and his self-satisfied little pensées did run thin after a certain time (about where he starts to get all cod-Mussolinian, all "the only cry to be respected is that of the victor," but again, because we've been with him a bit and know he is a regular guy, we forgive him it more or less because we remember our own moments of lame-assedly trying on tough-guy armour in our own heads). That and the painterly, by which I mean workmanlike, painter-as-in-house-painter, rendering of family dynamics and business matters in Italo-Austro-Slavonic Trieste in the immediate pre-WWI, make this a pleasant entertainment.

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As part of his psychoanalytic treatment, Zeno is encouraged to keep a journal and write about various aspects of his life. This begins with the apparently banal subject of Zeno’s cigarette addiction. But each further attempt turns to more serious subjects — the death of Zeno’s father, the story of Zeno’s marriage, his mistress, and his business partnership with his brother-in-law. Zeno concludes with a final section written during the first world war decrying psychoanalysis itself, . Throughout, Zeno is sceptical about the efficacy of this writing component of his cure. Yet he becomes increasingly enamoured of the story of his own life, regardless of how poorly he understands himself or others. Indeed, Zeno is the kind of unreliable narrator who is sceptical of his own narration. And so he often undercuts his accounts, sometimes even in the following sentence. And yet there is a charm here that captivates. Zeno is assuredly a fool. But no more so than each of the men he encounters in his life. Meanwhile all of the women he encounters (his wife, her sisters, their mother, his mistress) are paragons of virtue, kindness and forgiveness. Yet he also insists both that they know nothing, and worse that he knows nothing about what goes on in their heads. As you might suspect, we are moving swiftly in the territory of farce. So it is all the more surprising to find, by the end, how much pathos surrounds Zeno.An unremitting, self-absorbed, untrustworthy first-person narrator can get tedious even over the short run. Yet Zeno continues to fascinate even as he drones on. Plus, with the level of self-effacement at hand, and the outright lies (enough of which get revealed to hint of more), it is hard to fathom what exactly to make of Zeno’s confessions here. His weaknesses, it seems, are his strength. And his all-too-human frailty, is in the end what confirms his humanity.Well worth reading for its place in the history of modernism. But also worth reading because it is often very funny. And so, gently recommended.

[jvioland_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"I want you to record your thoughts, Zeno. It'll be part of your therapy."
"Really, Doctor? Well, if you say so."
That's what the book is about. We discover who Zeno is by reading his entries. An interesting technique, but not very memorable.

[maryka-9 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an amazing book. Svevo was discovered by James Joyce who considered this book brilliant and helped Svevo find a publisher. A wonderfully done unreliable narrator.

[miguelnunonave · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Written in a journal style, this is a rather interesting psychological novel with a very neurotic narrator. It is also a very good account of a time period and of a city (Trieste). Funny bits. Overall, though, I wouldn't go as far as saying this is the best early 20th-century Italian litterature has to offer...

[santhony_35 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This early 20th century novel is ostensibly a journal kept by neurotic Italian businessman Zeno Cosini at the behest of his psychiatrist. Cosini, the heir to an import/export business which is managed in trust for his benefit, gives the reader his skewed outlook on such things as quitting his cigarette habit, the death of his father, the courtship of his wife, his marriage and acquisition of a mistress among other seminal events in his life.The stories are relatively amusing and are very much period pieces, depicting life in the Balkan port city of Trieste near the turn of the century. The final two journal entries, by far the longest, concerning his acquisition and management of his mistress and his business partnership with his brother-in-law, both begin with promise, but soon bog down and ultimately become annoyingly repetitive and tedious.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A gritty English version by Italophile Weaver (Open City: Seven Writers and Rome, 1999, etc.) resurrects one of the indispensable 20th-century novels: the work of a prosperous businessman (whose real name was Ettore Schmitz), it’s a majestically ironic in-depth portrayal, in his own reluctant words, of its eponymous protagonist’s ruefully unromantic struggles with his domineering father, then the querulous family into which he marries, as well as the ignoble ravages of adultery and aging, psychoanalysis and tobacco addiction. You can hear Flaubert’s pugnacious mandarin contempt for all things bourgeois, and Dostoevsky’s furious comic voice in “Svevo’s” measured revelations of the slow erosive effects of quotidian disillusionment and passivity. A revolutionary book, and arguably (in fact, probably) the finest of all Italian novels.

[princesca_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

How verbose...

[michaelbartley · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The teacher I had for the novel class, said this was his favotie nove.. While there were parts I liked overall I didn't think that highly of it. I did like the section about the death of his farther

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Zeno Cosini legt zijn ziel bloot. Hypochonder en zenuwlijder. Baldadig in zijn openheid. Maar helaas voor mij oervervelend.

[caju_5 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Zeno is the most selfish, cynical and ironic narrator I have ever seen. The funny is, some passages do reflect what we usually think under similar circumstances (though we generally discard those thoughts). I think this is the reason this book is so captivating, it shows how ridiculous a human being can be.

[araridan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Italo Svevo was 62 when this book was published in the 1920s. The book feels very much like an "old man" book and takes the form of a fictional memoir. I happen to like "old man" stories, and this was no exception. Each chapter is essentially a "chapter" from Zeno's life. There's the story of his father's death, his marriage, his affair, and his business. I thought the first chapter dealing with his struggles with "last cigarettes" was pretty hilarious as was the story of his engagement to a woman he first dismissed as "ugly" while pursuing her more beautiful sister. Zeno's perspective is usually pretty funny and slightly neurotic, but he comes across as a particularly kind man even when he is engaging in behavior that could often be construed as less than moral or appropriate. I also find it humorous that the supposed reason for even writing this "memoir" is as an exercise prescribed by Zeno's therapist although Zeno himself believes the doctor to be pretty off the mark in his diagnosis, and Zeno confesses to often lying just to satisfy the doctor's theories. As a reader, we too cannot be entirely sure what parts of the memoir are "real" but I can't imagine anyone caring, because that streak of mischief is what keeps us attached to Zeno anyway.

[samatoha_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderfull.Svevo is a genius.The psychology digging into Zeno's (and ower's) mind is brilliant and fascinating.

[hippietrail · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There seems to be a sometimes distracting mix of British terms (turning, tap) and American spelling (color) in this edition.