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Rating:  Summary: A brilliant, incisive novel Review: Although this is ostensibly a novel about a bizarre character's interaction with the world around him, what I took from it is a probing, insightful look by Murdoch at the question of what would it be like if Jesus appeared in present times....Her prose is dense and the book can be difficult at times, but the payoff is well worth the effort.
Rating:  Summary: I'm just starting on Murdoch Review: I am just starting on Murdoch. Having read the Green Knight previously I found this book a dissapointment. Yet I couldn't, or wouldn't let myself put it down. In The Green Knight, Murdoch created a wonderful mixture of spiritual depths and the basic gossipy human interaction that makes a novel fantastic. Also, an incredible authorial and personal sense of the community that friends and (sometimes) family develop. This one seemed to be striving for the same and yet failed as I could see. I was continually judging the characters, weighing them mentally. This in itself is not a problem, but when they consisently come up lacking or increasingly confusing, and without what I sensed as an overriding authorial vision of who they truly are, it becomes difficult to maintain faith in a novel and the potential larger message. I found the narrator's fascination with the main character unjustified; indeed, his interpretations of all the characters were difficult. And again, such limited authorial intrustion to provide me with a reliable roadmap. Nevertheless, I am addicted to this writer and am now on the one Iris Murdoch a month track.
Rating:  Summary: I'm just starting on Murdoch Review: I am just starting on Murdoch. Having read the Green Knight previously I found this book a dissapointment. Yet I couldn't, or wouldn't let myself put it down. In The Green Knight, Murdoch created a wonderful mixture of spiritual depths and the basic gossipy human interaction that makes a novel fantastic. Also, an incredible authorial and personal sense of the community that friends and (sometimes) family develop. This one seemed to be striving for the same and yet failed as I could see. I was continually judging the characters, weighing them mentally. This in itself is not a problem, but when they consisently come up lacking or increasingly confusing, and without what I sensed as an overriding authorial vision of who they truly are, it becomes difficult to maintain faith in a novel and the potential larger message. I found the narrator's fascination with the main character unjustified; indeed, his interpretations of all the characters were difficult. And again, such limited authorial intrustion to provide me with a reliable roadmap. Nevertheless, I am addicted to this writer and am now on the one Iris Murdoch a month track.
Rating:  Summary: Philosophy and Love Review: I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I like this book at least as well as The Bell and the Sandcastle, and very possibly more. One of the characters in this book asks where ordinary morality is, when what is called for in the world is the courage of a saint. Once again, Murdoch visits the question of the Good and how it applies to human life. This time the question centers around Marcus, who anchors the novel as a character from myth-- sometimes a saint, sometimes Prospero, sometimes a lunatic. Each of the other characters in the book have to find their way (through eccentric marriages, chaste romances, resurrections, and mysticism) in a world where all the familiar rules no longer apply. All the solutions (where there are solutions) are complicated and costly. As usual, the writing is crisp and incisive, the characters well-formed and very complete. One of the great Murdoch novels.
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