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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
This book devastated me in 3 pretty distinct parts- each occupying a different part if my body, mind, and soul. I thought about reading it any moment I wasn't.
Iris Murdoch is a true artist. The complicated (but not overly-so) narrative style. The way she describes a room, or someone mannerisms. Her ability to write through Bradley about these feelings of success and failure, happiness, the dynamics between men and women, love, marriage, loneliness, art.
It moved me in a way you always hope a book might.
This book burns and, to quote it's creator, "can be endlessly reread and reinterpreted, it stirs imagination and fantasy, it persists, it is red-hot evidence."
Iris Murdoch is a true artist. The complicated (but not overly-so) narrative style. The way she describes a room, or someone mannerisms. Her ability to write through Bradley about these feelings of success and failure, happiness, the dynamics between men and women, love, marriage, loneliness, art.
It moved me in a way you always hope a book might.
This book burns and, to quote it's creator, "can be endlessly reread and reinterpreted, it stirs imagination and fantasy, it persists, it is red-hot evidence."
NY Times 1973 article
A well-fashioned study of narcissism and almost slapstick misunderstandings and convolutions. In the end, we question whether this story is truth or delusion - and who is the delusional one, anyway?
A well-fashioned study of narcissism and almost slapstick misunderstandings and convolutions. In the end, we question whether this story is truth or delusion - and who is the delusional one, anyway?
My third Iris Murdoch novel and I’ve loved them all, even if (or maybe because) they’re all the same. Upper middle class English people in very complicated love triangles (quadrangles, etc), manipulated time within an inch of their fictional lives to be funny and serious and philosophical. The philosophy is always a little too much for me, but I’ll take it given how good the plots are and how sharp the writing is.
a well written book full of impossibly horrible, ugly characters.
Murdoch is a pretty amazing writer. She manages to juggle lots of Big Themes at once, but elegantly, and although I occasionally felt a bit out of my depth (she's incredibly intellectual, sometimes densely philosophical), there were other moments of sheer mirth, or intense emotion, that kept me in it till the end.
After the end, though, came the postscripts, and I was not a fan of the postscripts.
After the end, though, came the postscripts, and I was not a fan of the postscripts.
Bradley Pearson’s cruelty, especially to the idiotic homosexual Francis Marloe, is hilarious; his infatuation with the young Julian Baffin is disturbing – yet entrancing. Murdoch’s portrayal of duelling novelists and that of writing as (literal?) deus-ex-machina are fascinating.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-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
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced