Bricked in

Gillian Greenwood

The Irish Signorina Julia O'Faolain (Viking £7.95) he family and the multifarious rela-

tionships therein seem to be the con- tinuing preoccupation of this author, in her novels at any rate. The settings may be foreign, Ireland and Los Angeles in the last two, now Tuscany; but the dilemmas of difficult children, unfaithful husbands, and women with decisions to make remain Constant. That is not to say that she is a Predictable writer. Her work merely re- flects the limited permutations of life and her great strength is the creation of little Worlds in which a rather odd group of folk IniPinges on the nucleus. Her collection of stories, Daughters of Passion, was a departure from this struc- ture, though the stories were all based on the rituals of love, with varying degrees of Success. Her new novel, The Irish Signor- ina, seems intended as a love story in the Gothic Romance vein, but we are back in the bosom of an aristocratic Italian family Whose awareness of position and inheri- tance further complicates some rather pre- dictable complexities. , The young Irish girl of the title arrives to stay with the Marchesa Cavalcanti whom she has never met before. Anne's mother had been 'companion' to the Marchesa's simple and now dead daughter many years 'f°re. As she arrives, a memorial wake is taking place for the dead' daughter. A giftnlY beginning. Within hours of her arrival at the villa (which makes do as a Gothic castle for the purpose of this vanalogY) Anne spies the Beast in the 4ower (a terrorist on the run who is being Protected by the Marchesa's grandson, en). There are also: a handsome, if a bit elderly hero, Neri's father, Guido; two Parallel mysteries to be solved (one past, °tie present); and an impediment to the ekrtse of true love in the shape of the „archesa, a woman of determination and na `ne lynchpin of both the family and the rrative. _ It seemed at first that it was the plot's til.ehes which make this a disappointing idk, but Julia O'Faolain has achieved an i tuLtosYncratic mastery over old chestnuts in :e past (the sexual fall of a priest, for example in The Obedient Wife). It is true that she does ,not unravel the mysteries — the terrrorist plot, the identity of Anne's mother's lover — very subtly. I, who can rarely tell who's dunnit, had no trouble crth these. There is a particularly clumsy Zvice whereby Anne happens to go into a fe and overhear a conversation of par- lenlar interest to her: 'Anne opened her

guide book and pretended to be absorbed. They seemed unaware of her . .

But all this would not have mattered had the characters revealed themselves along the way. They seem to be in hiding. The rough outlines of personalities are sketch- ed, some more strongly than others — the Marchesa almost comes off, though unfor- tunately she's dying and can rally only briefly — but their fleshing-out is sacrificed to the weak storyline. This is a great shame when one thinks what Miss O'Faolain might have made of them. Her horrible D.J. Terry Steele — `Mr Golden Voice of

the Southland' — and the dreadful tran- sient Briggs family in The Obedient Wife

are alarmingly substantial. There is a very

promising Monsignor in The Irish Signor- Ma whose comic possibilities boded well.

But he knows too much and is wheeled off whenever he begins to blossom. The one exception to this is a character who has nothing to do with the plot at all, Count Bonnacorso, or 'Bobo'.

Bobo has been in love with the Marchesa for 40 years or so. He has never married since she refused him. His observations and reflections hold the book together and it is his devotion to the Marchesa which delineates her presence more sharply than that of the other characters: By now she was mostly a creature of his mind. How dependent was he on her real presence? Even when he was with her, he saw several simultaneous images: the young Cosa, an ideal Cosa, the woman actually

there. Did he need that one? He did. He did. Memory, a wispy thing, would not sustain him, it would not survive.

Bobo is present, too, at the central set-piece of the novel: a dinner-party at which the verbal seduction of Anne by Guido takes place during a dialogue on the nobility of love. This is a rich episode despite its shadowy participants; we are witness only to Bobo's inner thoughts: Words anyway, came less readily now. Sometimes one said anything at all simply to fill a silence. Babbled or lapsed into another

tongue. Each had its speciality. The Emper- or Charles V had advised speaking Spanish

to God, French to one's mistress and - what? Bonnacorso's head was a sieve. 'Whoa he produced the in-drawn whistle he used with his pet canaries. 'Whoo!' Growing old was like evolution in reverse. He'd reached the bird stage.

Despite the clever artifice of this section, the ultimate problefh of the book remains: what is one to make of this central cou- pling? Guido, a suave politician in his late forties, is a philanderer and seemingly insincere. Anne is 22, supposedly mature for her years. Much more than that we simply do not know. Julia O'Faolain's previous heroines are far more distinctive. Perhaps Anne's youth caused the writer problems, though she is more successful with her portrayal of young Neri. After Neri and Anne have made love on the library floor, the author remarks 'their generation probably took such comforts much as Guido's had kissing and as Nicco- losa's might have viewed a couple going for an unchaperoned row in a boat.' Even in today's climate I suspect this is not so and that the author is at a bit of a loss with her young woman.

Despite this infidelity, Anne and Guido's love is the focus of the book, and it is utterly unconvincing. The limitationS which Miss O'Faolain has set herself also prevent, for the most part, her graceful prose from transcending the banal. She has bricked herself in and, despite the Tuscan sunshine, delivered an unripe fruit.