SOURCE: "Solitary Refinement," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3371, October 6, 1966, p. 913.

In the following review, the critic depicts Summer Storm as a self-portrait of Pavese, who the reviewer describes as a man who found it difficult to love or to be happy.

Cesare Pavese's personality comes across with uncanny power in everything he wrote, whether or not it is directly autobiographical, whether or not the narrator's voice seems to be his own. Few writers have impressed themselves so unmistakably on their works as he did; few writers, especially, whose style is as "unstylish" as his—as unindividual, as anonymous and transparent. Each new book of his is like another meeting: their effect is cumulative, each adding to, though not necessarily repeating, the effect of those known already. In this way they are less autobiography than self-portraiture. One comes to feel a close knowledge not so much of the...