Interesting look at Italy and the politics of Feminism and Unionisation, Fascism, and Class politics.
The friendship and rivalry between two gifted girls highlights the disparity of their families' wealth as one goes on to being an author and the other is trapped working in a factory under untenable conditions. 
  
My only concern with listening to this version dramatised by the BBC was that, by the length of it, the content appears to have been abridged to about one quarter the length of the original text, making it closer to the length of one book than the original collection of four whole books.. so I don't really know what I'm missing out on.