To write that a novel starts with 'attack' may be dismissed as critics' journalese. In this case the word is strictly accurate. The preliminary chapter is a fierce attack on the kind of Roman Catholic education the writer was subjected to as a child.
In the opening pages she fairly grabs her readers by the throat. This author is Aileen La Tourette, a long-time member of SOF. Ex-Catholics often react with intense feelings about the total culture that once had them in thrall. In this novel Aileen appears to be working through her experience of the domination of religion, and also the accepted role of 'the oldest girl' in typical, inevitably large, Catholic families, where the girl may bear the brunt of childcare and household tasks.
The focus of her attack is the sentimentalised spin put upon the story of a child saint, St Maria Goretti, who was killed in 1902 at the age of eleven while trying to fend off a sexual attack. By 1950 it suited the then Pope to have a young innocent icon of sexual purity to promote. Pius XII was under a personal cloud, suspected of having been soft on Nazism. He needed an appealing image. The Oldest Girl is Aileen's imagined story of the real Maria's short unhappy life. The author's rhetorical question to the dead girl, 'Who the hell are you?' is startlingly answered as Maria awakens and, with the wisdom of hindsight, replies. She then tells her own tale, interspersed with episodes in which the viewpoints of other characters are explored.
Maria, and before that her mother, would have lived at the bottom of the human heap, lives of ceaseless labour and painful hunger verging on starvation, enduring bullying and cruelty. Maria and her family are depicted as dirty, smelly, illiterate Italian peasants – as opposed to the privileged upbringing of young Eugenio, who would become Pius XII. But they are real people with strengths as well as helplessness. Maria's father literally works himself to death for his family.
So you may not precisely 'enjoy' all you read here. It is a mark of Aileen La Tourette's power as a writer that she can make a reader wince and squirm with the sheer pain of it all. The many descriptions of food deprivation and its effects are vivid and appalling.
Maria is no saint, nor is her killer a criminal.
Both are victims of time, place and circumstance. Maria's mother Assunta is a wayward girl and a difficult woman, her character formed in reaction to the inhumane treatment of penniless orphans by the church of that time. They and all around them are utterly subservient to the church and its priesthood, which they are not equipped to question.
And yet Maria, from her vantage point beyond the grave, does now question. 'How many ways are there for God to torture human beings?' she asks. 'Our house was ready to burst with hunger and anger.' 'Whomever and whatever was to blame for what was about to happen to us, hunger played its part.' By now you may be wondering why you should read a novel about so much misery. Let me promise you this: you will be spellbound. La Tourette's writing is powerful and enthralling, her human empathy profound. Though we know what will happen – the murder, the later canonisation – still the unfolding of events and characters remains compelling.
Admirable too is the structure of the book, which, though complex, is never confusing and allows the author to use varying techniques.
These include first and third person narratives and comment from the dead Maria. At one point Maria's narration freezes, and a significant incident is at once retold from the point of view of Alessandro, who would become her killer.
Finally in 1950 we meet the Pope and Assunta at the time of the canonisation.
One small quibble: pity about the scattering of typographical errors. A better publisher's editor would have eliminated them. But don't worry, they are all minor and you can always easily guess what word was intended.
Reviewed: The Oldest Girl by Aileen La Tourette, Caliband (London 2011), Pbk. 297 pages, £10.99.