Lalla Romano's major works evoke the past as seen through her personal experience: her childhood years in the provincial towns and mountains of Piedmont, her student years in Turin in the 1920's her marriage, the difficulties of everyday life, the relationship with her son and grandson, her husband's illness and death, and her travels and impressions of people she met. She is associated with the letteratura della memoria (literature of remembrance), a genre that was cultivated by many Italian authors between 1930 and 1940 when Fascism limited their possibilities of expression.

Romano's goal as a writer is to preserve the past, not to sentimentalize it. She draws from such personal experiences as domestic events and simple family affections, which she explores minutely in all their possibilities, including the fabulous. She tries to capture the moments of truth that exist in memory in a measured style, poetically evoking the moment rather...