Irene Carrera

Irene Carrera is Marco Carrera’s older sister, whose suicide by drowning at the Mulinelli becomes a defining loss for the family and a formative memory for Marco. Her final crisis is presented not as an isolated act but as the culmination of recurring depression, social isolation, difficulty obtaining support, and warnings that those around her do not recognize in time.

Identity and Background

Irene’s moods have long fluctuated between scenes of rebellion, periods of silence, apparent renewals, outbursts of affection and optimism, and returns to sadness and anger. The family has grown accustomed to these changes and to actions she undertakes to attract attention, a familiarity that has dulled its sense of alarm rather than made it better able to help her. She is under the care of a psychoanalyst in Florence, but he is away for August. Although he has left a number Irene could call, the foreign prefix is unfamiliar and long, making the route to help harder to take.

In the summer of 1981, Irene has completed her final examinations and passed with top marks, but academic success does not ease her isolation. Plans for a trip to Greece collapse when a friend withdraws; a possible trip to Ireland is never organized, and suggestions of a few days in Versilia come to nothing. By mid-August she is back at the family’s summer house in Bolgheri, a place she had hoped to leave behind. The failed plans expose the weakness of her social connections, which the narrative presents as both a consequence of her depression and one of the conditions reinforcing it.

The August Crisis

The family’s ordinary summer routines continue around Irene’s distress. Her father cooks and reads, her mother sunbathes and reads, and her brothers are occupied with sports and their own lives. The family also discusses Marco’s impending growth treatment night after night. Irene secretly listens, despite a temporary truce over the subject, and remains attentive to a household in which her own crisis is not the focus.

One evening, after a meager dinner of leftovers, Irene says she is going to secure the family’s Vaurien sailboat in its shed because a storm is expected. The explanation sounds plausible, but it is out of character: her father, not Irene, is usually preoccupied with protecting the boat. Marco recognizes the danger and understands that she is heading toward the Mulinelli, the turbulent stretch of water in front of the family’s hut. Four people associated with the family’s holidays there had already drowned, and their deaths were spoken of as suicides.

As Irene leaves with an old hemp rope over her shoulder, neither her mother nor her brother Giacomo tries to stop her. Marco, nearly fifteen but still looking about twelve because of his hormonal deficiency, sees what the others miss. He follows her without announcing his decision, driven by the recognition that it is now up to him to try to save his sister. When Irene sees him on the path toward the dunes, she orders him to go home; he continues after her. His response is immediate and bodily before it becomes an argument: he understands the risk, leaves the house, and refuses to let her walk toward the water alone.

Warnings Unheard

The later account of August 23 makes Irene’s exhaustion unmistakable to the reader. Her eyes are sunken, her gaze shattered, and she moves through the house wearing headphones. The red Walkman her brothers gave her for Christmas plays “Gloomy Sunday” on a continuous loop, the same song on both sides of the cassette. The music is not treated as a sufficient explanation for her suicide; it is one warning among several, made legible to the reader while remaining unheard by the family.

Her mother, Letizia, does not register the change either. The narrative imagines that noticing Irene’s condition might have given Letizia a reason to stay home, offer her food, or ask whether she wanted to talk, but Letizia is preoccupied and does not see the danger gathering. On that evening, Marco leaves to meet Luisa Lattes, and the family house is empty. The contrast between Marco’s anticipated happiness and Irene’s concealed crisis sharpens the scene’s account of how closely joy and catastrophe can coexist without being perceived by the same people.

The song’s ominous reputation deepens this pattern of missed signals but does not settle the causes of Irene’s death. “Gloomy Sunday” had become known internationally as the Hungarian song of suicides, with stories attributing deaths to its sadness; censorship and restrictions followed. In 1941, a verse added to Billie Holiday’s version framed the preceding events as a dream, an attempt to soften the song’s meaning. Irene listens instead to Lydia Lunch’s acid, whispered recording, without that reassuring added verse. The narrative places the song beside her isolation and the family’s failure to see her exhaustion, rather than reducing her crisis to the music.

Death and Narrative Significance

On the night of August 23, Irene goes from the house toward the beach and the Mulinelli. The account follows other members of the family elsewhere along the coast, each absorbed in a different state of anticipation or contentment, while Irene’s fate unfolds beyond their awareness. Her body is later returned by the currents to the shoreline. The sea that Marco feared would take her becomes the means by which she is found.

Irene’s death establishes a lasting divide between what Marco recognizes and what the rest of the family fails to perceive. The narrative attends to risk signals, barriers to reaching her therapist, the collapse of social plans, and the family’s habituation to her changing moods; it does not assign a single cause or turn her suicide into a simple lesson in blame. The recurring “Gloomy Sunday” cassette gives the crisis a concrete, repeated warning, while Marco’s decision to follow her shows the closeness of their sibling bond and the limits of what his recognition can accomplish.