Introduction

Irse de casa tells the story of the return of 64-year-old Amparo Miranda to her home town in Spain, which she left as a young girl with her unmarried mother, Ramona Miranda, a gifted seamstress. Now a mother herself to two grown-up children and widow of a wealthy empresario, Amparo is a successful fashion designer who has lived most of her life in New York. But, as with many of Martín Gaite's protagonists, she feels dissatisfied with her current life. The novel thus narrates a literal and metaphorical journey back to origins, during the course of which Amparo, despite avoiding many of her former friends, becomes reconciled with her past and so finds a renewed focus for her future.

Alongside Amparo's story are a number of secondary or supporting narratives which, as Martín Gaite herself describes them in the novel, criss-cross like train tracks at a junction, illustrating the complexity and richness of life’s social fabric across several generations. One of these sub-plots recounts the tale of Olimpia, the Spanish town's aristocratic heiress whose idiosyncrasies amuse her neighbours. Another deals with Manuela Roca, a divorcée with a rather strained family set-up. Her estranged husband Agustín, a doctor and friend to Olimpia, and his sister Tarsi, who runs a hair-dressing and beauty salon, also feature. Abel Bores, Amparo's former ami de coeur, plays a significant role in the novel's dénouement. Finally, Amparo's son Jeremy has an important supporting role as the writer of a film script which anticipates uncannily his mother's return to Spain and provides a metafictional frame for the novel.

Many of Martín Gaite's standard concerns are evident in Irse, not least the motif of a journey of self-discovery that is effected through both exchanges with others and personal reflection on the past. The author returns to themes such as companionship and loneliness; the restrictions of gender stereotypes and consequences of patriarchal social roles; and the figure of the chica rara, which reappears as if in a recuperation of elements from earlier works. Indeed, one might say that the chica rara category again includes chicos raros, in a gesture back to David Fuente of Ritmo lento and Pablo Klein of Entre visillos.