Vasco Pratolini is, in one sense, a writer who in his stories, though clear in description and terms, is rather abstract in his meaning. He leaves the reader with an understanding of what exactly took place in the narrative, while also allowing the reader to come to his or her own conclusion as to the meaning of that understanding.
             A good example of this is found in The Removal, a story that contains many components of Pratolini's own life experiences in Florence. Pratolini was born in Florence, Italy in 1913. In The Removal, he describes a grandmother and her grandson being forced to leave a building that had been the grandmother's home for over 30 years. What can be found interesting in the story is that the grandson could have been loosely based on Pratolini himself.
             Pratolini's mother died early in his childhood, and with his father being called into duty in the first World War, Vasco, encumbered by circumstances, was forced to live with his grandparents. This situation did not substantially change with the return of his father from the war. His father remarried, and Vasco did not fit well with the new family unit.
             How the story ties into Vasco's true-to-life experiences is depicted by how the grandson in the story relates to the grandmother. He seems to be the dutiful and obedient grandchild that faces the realism of the moment more readily perhaps than does the grandmother. That the grandson also loves and misses his mother, is rather poignantly pointed out in the last paragraph of the story, after he has accidentally dumped the wheelbarrow carrying all their worldly possessions.
             His grandmother explains to the new neighbors the significance of the photograph of his mother (that had fallen to the ground) by saying; the photograph was her daughter, the boy's mother.
             Pratolini, who some experts say is the individual who initiated the Realism era of literature, was more than realisti...