A review by sarahmatthews
The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch

Read in Braille

Vintage

Pub. 1963, 272pp

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Marian Taylor is a young teacher who travels from the UK to take up a position as a governess in an isolated house somewhere in the wilds of Ireland, what could possibly go wrong?!

When she arrives she’s met by Gerald who explains that she’s not been employed to teach children as expected but will be a companion to the lady of the house, Hannah.

 There’s a feeling of tension from the start, and of course, as this is Iris Murdoch, some beautiful writing about landscape, with the dangerous wild sea crashing on the rocks ever present. Here’sMarian gazing out of the window during the car journey to the house at the opening:

“It was the sea here which seemed black, mingling with the foam like ink with cream… she found the vast dark coastline repellent and frightening. She had never seen a land so out of sympathy with man.”

The first few chapters gave me Daphne du Maurier vibes as there’s a distinctly gothic atmosphere. When the perspective shifted to Effingham, another outsider who joins the story as he’s visiting his former tutor, Max, who lives in the only neighbouring house, I was thrown a bit but soon adjusted and found his storyline very engaging. The’s a brilliantly gripping scene where he stumbles into a bog! Also, he’s got a huge ego and believes a number of the women are in love with him! There are several points where he brings light relief to quite a claustrophobic story. 

Effingham and Marion are convinced that there’s something up with Hannah, who never leaves the house, and try to find out what’s going on. It turns out that her husband has kept her there under the watchful eye of the servants,  has been in New York for about 7 years, and that the history of their relationship is more complicated than it appears at first. They’re firmly in favour of setting her free but is that what she wants? There are questions around freedom, morality, guilt, and spirituality, and Max tries to talk this through with Effingham who’s become besotted with Hannah but he can’t take it on board. 

The characters all seem to be under some kind of spell and towards the end it all becomes much darker and melodramatic and people start falling in love with each other at the drop of a hat! I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the intensity of it all.

Iris Murdoch  intimidates me a bit as she’s a philosopher and I’m sure a lot of metaphor and deeper meaning was lost on me on this reading of the novel. I imagine it’s one that could be studied in depth as it’s pretty complex, but I found it easy to get into, with beautiful writing, deeply weird characters and an  astonishing amount of whiskey drinking!