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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
I do not understand the love this book gets - I hung in there, hoping it would get better but not for me. Not even Simon Vance, a favorite Audible narrator, could redeem this book for me.
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Iris Murdoch's "The Sea, The Sea" is the tale of Charles Arrowby, a narcissistic actor/director who retires to Shruff End, a gloomy seaside home to write his memoirs. His peace and quiet is quickly interrupted by a bevy of girlfriends past, including a chance encounter with Mary Hartley Smith, his first love.
Arrowby is at once smitten and obsessed with Hartley and the book becomes a complicated tangle of jealousy, obsession and possibly even madness. The line between reality and fiction (in Arrowby's world) is so blurred that the book really plunges along moving from the ridiculous to the absurd in an entertaining way.
I liked the book a lot, though I won't say that I loved it. (Reading the first 100 or so pages, I thought this might be a five star book for me... but as the story evolved I saw that it wouldn't be.) I adore Murdoch's writing style. However, as the absurdity and egotism of the narrator builds to a crescendo, the overall story lost a little steam as it stretched the bounds of credibility farther and farther. I still give the book a good, solid thumbs up... just not as enthusiastically as I initially thought it would be.
Arrowby is at once smitten and obsessed with Hartley and the book becomes a complicated tangle of jealousy, obsession and possibly even madness. The line between reality and fiction (in Arrowby's world) is so blurred that the book really plunges along moving from the ridiculous to the absurd in an entertaining way.
I liked the book a lot, though I won't say that I loved it. (Reading the first 100 or so pages, I thought this might be a five star book for me... but as the story evolved I saw that it wouldn't be.) I adore Murdoch's writing style. However, as the absurdity and egotism of the narrator builds to a crescendo, the overall story lost a little steam as it stretched the bounds of credibility farther and farther. I still give the book a good, solid thumbs up... just not as enthusiastically as I initially thought it would be.
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Murdoch is a fabulous writer to read. Passages of deep poetic insight merge with humour, keenly observed personality profiles, intense writing, evocative descriptions of food and the star of the show, the sea. The book is a kind of psychological drama/holiday caper featuring the retired fantasist/theatre director, Charles Arrowby and the host of ardent friends and ex-loves who come to visit his new home by the sea at Shruff End. Charles is an arrogant egoist equally uncomfortable with the complicit male world of bawdy and the 'awful eternal presence of marriage', preferring to live in the never-never land of art. Despite many close ethical and mortal shaves, he neglects to change a thing.
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
The novel's centrepiece – the recently retired doyen of the theatre, Charles Arrowby – is an unlikable sort of chap. Given this, and the fact that the entire 600-plus page novel emerges from the immediate first person of Arrowby, I was amazed how much I enjoyed this behemoth.
Murdoch has done a magnificent job in first rendering our narrator in such unflattering terms, in which the vanities, jealousies and utter lack of compassion comes to the forefront, then slowly work towards finding some (faint) redemptive hope by the end.
Charles recounts events meticulously, filled with comic set-pieces involving a cast of luvvies set adrift on the remote English coast. Unable to recognise the egotism and selfishness of his romantic ideals, he pursues a bewildered old woman who once was his first love many years before.
As the title indicates, the sea (along with a decaying house and grounds) plays a significant role in the book. It's always beautifully described. One might complain that no character beyond Charles has any convincing inner life. For me, this Charles' egotism and failure to conceive of a world outside of his head explain the lack of depth around him.
The story comes from Arrowby, whose unreliability is constantly in the foreground; the book is variously sublime, ridiculous, complex, facile, profound and specious. Charles is at once talented but destructive and ridiculous. The absurdity of his self-importance renders any egocentrism somewhat more plausible.
The dark absurdity of the novel's centre – a 250-page extended nervous breakdown – showcases Charles’s desperate obsession to render his life meaningful through the pursuit of love is bleakly depressing. I’d never have believed that I would soften towards the chap by the story’s end, but I did.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ½
The novel's centrepiece – the recently retired doyen of the theatre, Charles Arrowby – is an unlikable sort of chap. Given this, and the fact that the entire 600-plus page novel emerges from the immediate first person of Arrowby, I was amazed how much I enjoyed this behemoth.
Murdoch has done a magnificent job in first rendering our narrator in such unflattering terms, in which the vanities, jealousies and utter lack of compassion comes to the forefront, then slowly work towards finding some (faint) redemptive hope by the end.
Charles recounts events meticulously, filled with comic set-pieces involving a cast of luvvies set adrift on the remote English coast. Unable to recognise the egotism and selfishness of his romantic ideals, he pursues a bewildered old woman who once was his first love many years before.
As the title indicates, the sea (along with a decaying house and grounds) plays a significant role in the book. It's always beautifully described. One might complain that no character beyond Charles has any convincing inner life. For me, this Charles' egotism and failure to conceive of a world outside of his head explain the lack of depth around him.
The story comes from Arrowby, whose unreliability is constantly in the foreground; the book is variously sublime, ridiculous, complex, facile, profound and specious. Charles is at once talented but destructive and ridiculous. The absurdity of his self-importance renders any egocentrism somewhat more plausible.
The dark absurdity of the novel's centre – a 250-page extended nervous breakdown – showcases Charles’s desperate obsession to render his life meaningful through the pursuit of love is bleakly depressing. I’d never have believed that I would soften towards the chap by the story’s end, but I did.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ½
I told a friend that I was waiting for this book to come in at the library, and she told me she had a copy and she'd loan it to me. Of course I said, "Great, thanks!" but inside I was thinking "Oh dear", because I actually wasn't expecting to enjoy it, and she has literary pretensions that I don't (e.g. despite being a New Zealander born and bred, she doesn't read NZ fiction because she thinks we're not up to standard. This snobbery, of course, is what my generation and our parents' generation were brought up with, and it's sad that it still exists (but not, happily, in such great numbers any more)). Now, I read a number of Iris Murdoch's novels when I was at secondary school (the year I was 15) and I honestly can't remember if I liked them or not. What I do remember was my mother being concerned that I was reading them - "Iris Murdoch is so gloomy," she said - and I certainly haven't read any in between then and now. But for some reason I had put this book on my to-read list.
Well, I read it. And today I returned it to my friend. She asked me (as I knew she would) what I thought of it. I had decided to be honest, and if she thought lesser of me then so be it. But her tone of voice, in the asking, reassured me, and when I said "Er", and did that hand wobble thing you do when you mean that something was so-so, she agreed. She even said she was so glad that I felt the same as her.
So, why do we - two 60-something (closer to 70, in truth), reasonably well-educated and well-read women - give this Booker Prize Winning novel (oh yes, that's why I put it on my to-read list - I thought I ought to tackle all of the winners) a less than resounding review? It's quite simple really - we didn't like the man. Not liking him meant we really were not interested in his life and his obsessions. We thought the descriptive prose was excellent. We found the setting really interesting. But we just didn't like the narrator, nor most of the people he talked about and communicated with. My friend said, "Maybe that's why I never really like Iris Murdoch - none of her characters are likable." For me, I'm pleased to have read it but I didn't like it. And that's that.
Well, I read it. And today I returned it to my friend. She asked me (as I knew she would) what I thought of it. I had decided to be honest, and if she thought lesser of me then so be it. But her tone of voice, in the asking, reassured me, and when I said "Er", and did that hand wobble thing you do when you mean that something was so-so, she agreed. She even said she was so glad that I felt the same as her.
So, why do we - two 60-something (closer to 70, in truth), reasonably well-educated and well-read women - give this Booker Prize Winning novel (oh yes, that's why I put it on my to-read list - I thought I ought to tackle all of the winners) a less than resounding review? It's quite simple really - we didn't like the man. Not liking him meant we really were not interested in his life and his obsessions. We thought the descriptive prose was excellent. We found the setting really interesting. But we just didn't like the narrator, nor most of the people he talked about and communicated with. My friend said, "Maybe that's why I never really like Iris Murdoch - none of her characters are likable." For me, I'm pleased to have read it but I didn't like it. And that's that.