SOURCE: A review of A Music behind the Wall: Selected Stories, Vol. 1, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 241, No. 20, May 16, 1994, p. 52.

In the following, the critic briefly reviews A Music behind the Wall.

Ortese has been a major force in Italian literature since her first volume appeared in 1937; her most recent book was published in Italy in 1987. The stories in this collection [A Music behind the Wall: Selected Stories, Volume 1], the first of a projected two-volume set, are culled from this 50-year career. Martin supplies neither dates nor sources for the entries, displaying a disregard for chronology of which Ortese herself might well approve. Much of her idiosyncratic fiction deals with the vagaries of time: "The Submerged Continent" is characteristic of Ortese's themes and her deceptively ingenuous narratives. Here the author explores a woman's search to understand her past, unfolded as a complex, fable-like mix of memories, dreams and history...