ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how an analysis of 'La famiglia' throws light on crucial aspects of La casa in collina and points out new links with some of the more controversial material that has emerged in the Taccuino and with La luna e i falo. It focuses on the confessional aspect in the two fictional works, 'La famiglia' and La casa in collina, and relates them to the revelations in Cesare Pavese's secret notebook of 1943, a document so authentically confessional that Pavese excluded it from immediate publication, whilst clearly choosing not to destroy it. The chapter shows how certain elements Pavese has retained from the earlier work, considered together with those he has altered or discarded, must influence our interpretation of the later book, in particular our perception of the degree of 'guilt' of the protagonist and to what exacdy he is confessing.
