Week 40 (2026) Reading – Rosalind Belben again

To read Rosalind Belben’s 1974 novel The Limit is to find yourself admitted to rooms where you are going to feel very uncomfortable. To the hospital room where Ilario sits and watches as his wife Anna tries to die from the cancer that has been eating away at her. To their bedroom on the night of their wedding, when the 40-year-old virgin and her much younger husband painfully discover they are sexually unsuited for each other. To the bedroom years later, when a rapturous night leads only to an “orgy of remorse.” To the room where Anna lies, a corpse. There are more difficult moments packed into the 101 pages of The Limit, a book that is tough, poignant, terse. Of the three novels by Belben that I have read so far, this is the earliest, and it is the one that pushes the boundaries of fiction and life the farthest. Republished by The New York Review of Books, 2023.