SOURCE: "Italian Fantasies," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3544, January 29, 1970, p. 115.

In the following review of L'alone grigio, the critic discusses the style and tone of Ortese's writing.

Anna Maria Ortese has an extraordinary presence, one that glows through everything she writes and turns everyday subjects into festive ones. More than a style, it is a case of personality; indeed, the style as such is transparent, a limpid, unaffected, one might almost say un-Italian means of expression—un-Italian at least in its apparently artless air of plain speaking, its total lack of rhetoric. Seldom does a writer make so personal and immediate an impact, so almost idiosyncratic and private an effect. Ortese readers may feel they are eavesdropping on some sad (yet on the surface often cheerful) soliloquy; or else involved in a tête-à-tête, a special encounter, admitted to a secret world of fantasy, a...