The Italian Girl

by Iris Murdoch

3 August 2025

Well, publishing this post was delayed because I couldn’t find the book to photograph having slung it somewhere on a shelf in the house when I finished it with very little ceremony. That probably tells you all you need to know about what I thought of it really!

It’s been years since I last tried Iris Murdoch. I read A Severed Head thirteen years ago and that was about twenty years after I read a stack of her books in my late-teens/early-20s when I would have said that she was one of my favourite authors. I didn’t enjoy A Severed Head much and this wasn’t any better. Very much a case of “meh” and gave me no idea why I should care about any of these characters.

And again I still don’t want to re-read the books I originally enjoyed because I don’t want to taint my own memories of them, which are great! Sometimes you just grow out of things I guess?

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