How well does Ginzburg's autobiographical Family Lexicon hold up as a novel?

If we were to follow the author's suggestion, as stated in her foreword, and read Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon (1963, McPhee tr.) as a novel, how would it hold up? Not well, I'm afraid. I'd say that a huge portion of the interest in this so-called novel (at best grouped as "autobiographical fiction") is in learning about the Levi family and their many contacts, connections, and misadventures in Turin in the 1930s. Unfortunately, these bits of preserved history are of much greater interest, I think, to Italian readers who will be familiar w/ many of the famous and infamous people the Levis knew in prewar Italy, to people who've read many of NGs other works (the same kind of interest I felt in reading, say, Roth's The Facts), and to those w/ a lot of background in the history of Italy in the 20th century. Not that this work is without its pleasures and at least limited interest to all readers: the portrait of the tyrannical father is one of the best characterizations (assassinations?) I've read, and the tone throughout is sharp-witted, observant, and accessible. But it's not Knausgaard or, not even close, Proust (he subject of much admiration in this literary/intellectual family). To give just one example: By far the most dramatic incident in at least the first half of the narrative is the escape of older brother from the fascist police: He's in the act of smuggling antifascist literature into neutral Switzerland when he's stopped at customs and shaken down; as the police are leading him toward, presumably, the police HQ he dives into the freezing river, fully clothed, and swims toward the Swiss shore - to be eventually pulled to safety on a rowboat that the Swiss police launched. Well, in any novel this scene would be presented dramatically by an omniscient narrator, but in this work it's coldly reported to the family, and to us, via letter (I think). Other examples abound: The hypersensitive father is arrested and spends weeks in prison, but we learn little or nothing about how he adapted to life in jail; in a novel, that would be fleshed out fully - but NG is strict in her telling and won't go beyond the scope of her own, first-hand childhood experiences and memories (to be fair, perhaps she has written about these matters in other works - again, the Roth comparison is telling, giving readers opportunity to compare the fiction w/ "the facts"). The Levi family, as noted, knew many key players in the intellectual, artistic, political community in Italy, many of whom went on to great prominence in postwar life; McPhee is helpful on these points in her notes, but these detailed will never reverberate to most American readers as they do inevitably to many Italians: It's a book worth reading (it's relatively brief) but probably not the best intro to NG's works of fiction.