La lingua perduta delle gru by David Leavitt

Once their sanctuary from the outside world is threatened, the rest of their carefully structured life begins to crumble as well. “She had stumbled into her husband on a strange street corner, running some mysterious errand she knew nothing of, and they had spoken briefly like strangers, parted like strangers.”The first cracks appear on the surface of the Benjamin family life when Rose and Owen learn that their New York City apartment will be converted into a co-op, and they must either buy it or move out. When she accidentally meets Owen on the street one Sunday while taking a walk, Rose realizes that after 27 years of marriage, she hardly knows him: Rose has no idea how Owen spends these Sundays and would never dream of asking. Every Sunday, they go their separate ways Rose reads the paper and works in their apartment, while Owen spends the day at a gay pornographic cinema. While Rose and Owen both know that their intimacy has faded, neither is willing to question the basic value of their relationship. They lead a tightly structured life, devoting their days to work and their evenings to reading.

Rose is a copy editor, and Owen, the director of admissions at a private boys’ school.

Set in 1980s New York against the backdrop of the Aids epidemic, the novel recounts the lives of the Benjamin family parents Rose and Owen (both 52) and their son Philip (25). It explores the terrible secrets that families keep from one another, and the consequences of their discovery. The Lost Language of Cranes is David Leavitt’s first novel and was published in 1986. I was thinking every day how I had to change my life, how I couldn’t go on this way but I knew the more I thought that, the farther I was getting from where I thought I should have been.” ”It was horrible, really, what I was feeling, the sense I had that I was running a terrible risk every minute of my life - risking my family, my career - but not being able to help it somehow just not being able to help it.

La lingua perduta delle gru by David Leavitt