Edmund Narraway returns to his family home, an old rectory in the north of England, for the cremation of his mother, Lydia.

After the service Isabel, Otto's apparently neurotic wife, attempts to involve Edmund in her small and frustrated life.

When Edmund later talks to his self-pitying brother, he detects evidence of a sexual tension between Otto and his apprentice David Levkin.

One by one, each character in the house manages to enveigle Edmund in a series of confessions, exposés and almost farcical in flagrante delicto discoveries.

Edmund, though sexually aloof and anodyne now seems, somewhat contradictorily, highly prone to getting involved and seeing himself as an integral part of everyone else's problem, if not the means to a solution.

He cuts a slightly preposterous and contemptible figure, ever more so as each character, led by David Levkin and Flora, respectively devilish and vituperative, make evident their disgust for him.

The same production opened on 1 February 1968 at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End, where it ran for 315 performances.

[2][3] In March 2019, the London-based production company Rebel Republic Films announced that it had optioned The Italian Girl and was developing a screenplay based on the book.