The Italian Girl

Edmund Narraway, an engraver, is the narrator in this stunning novel by Iris Murdoch. One day he returns to his family house in northern England for the funeral of his recently deceased mother Lydia. Otto, Edmund's brother, a stone mason, still lives in the house with his wife Isabel and daughter Flora, along with Maria Magistrelli - Maggie - the nurse whom both Otto and Edmund consider as their second "mother". She is the Italian girl who brought up the two boys since neither their father John - a "nonentity" - nor Lydia - an intensely mean woman - took any part in their upbringing. Their childhood passed in an alternate frenzy of jealousy and of suffocation from their mother and Edmund feels that, although he didn't return to the house for many years, he never escaped from Lydia, that she got inside him, into the depth of his being and that there was no abyss and no darkness where she was not. And soon Edmund discovers that the remaining relatives still living in the old house are entangled in a web of deceit and false pretence. Flora is pregnant by David Levkin, Otto's apprentice, who is now having an affair with Isabel whereas Elsa, David's sister, is Otto's lover. Edmund quickly realises that his brother Otto, a violently tempered man, has become an alcoholic and he wonders whether he isn't himself rapidly becoming part of "the machine". Soon he feels agitated, exasperated and confused. He finds the whole situation "too scandalous, too outrageous". Edmund is constantly on the brink of leaving, not wanting "to be inside such a circle of hell". But due to his sympathy or weakness, he feels that his presence is needed by both his sister and his niece. But little does he know about the outcome of his stay at the old family house... Mrs Murdoch has been compared to Tolstoy and Dostoyevski for her literary skills and certainly "The Italian Girl" proves her capacity to show that being in love provides joy but can turn otherwise decent individuals into monsters of cruelty and blindness.

The dark, engrossing story of a family falling apart after the evil-sounding mother figure passes away. The main character Edmund returns to his childhood home to find his brother is living a quite complicated, mixed up lifestyle. Edmund tries to help all members of the family, but tries to not get too involved. A good dark family story, with a happy ending--for Edmund at least.

I honestly can't ever imagine giving an Iris Murdoch novel less than four stars. Her books are almost uniformly well written and compelling. This is no exception.The Italian Girl tells the story of an unhappy family on the eve of the death of the family matriarch. The characters include a spartan typesetter, two witchy Russian siblings, a disappointed housewife, and (of course) the Italian Girl. I don't find this novel to be one of her strongest (not compared to books like The Bell or The Sandcastle) but then again, I can't imagine a book of hers that isn't worth reading.