Women of Messina is [a] fascinating oddity…. It is a strange book to appear in 1975, written in a style, all too faithfully rendered in the English, based closely on the prewar Hemingway whom Elio Vittorini so much admired.

This makes it quite difficult to read even if, as one is assured, it authentically expresses the inarticulacies of Italian peasant communication. But it is also a curiously appropriate tract for our times, for it recounts the trials and vicissitudes of a commune dedicated to, or at least based on, self-sufficiency and mutual support….

[The] outside world intrudes: the scorn of the city-dwellers for the peasant community's lack of information and modern comforts is enough to foment discontent and, soon, decay. These days, the temptations are all the other way; but that does not invalidate the message, or diminish the solid if rather low-key satisfaction to be had from the...