Rating: 
Summary: One of my favorite books - I need it now.
Review: Fast-paced, funny, unpredictable, this book may be Murdoch's best. I originally came to it because I read that she had based her first novel on the ideas (and character) of Ludwig Wittgenstein. I did, in fact, find some elements of W's ideas in it; but that's not really the reason I found this book so beguiling. As a novel it succeeds brilliantly: it manages to present complex ideas in a completely literary form. You are so caught up in the plot, the characters, the comedy, you may never notice the author is doing philosophy.The writing is excellent: Murdoch describes a night of drunken revelry so well that you can feel the chill air on your skin. She also puts together an unforgettable cast of characters: Sadie the movie star; her mysterious sister Anne; Hugo, the tortured soul; Dave the impatient academic; Lefty the socialist bon-viveur; Magdalen the ambitious secretary; Sacred Sammy the cool operator... and more. Read it as as a philosophical 'bildungsroman' or read it as a picaresque romp - entertainment guaranteed.
Rating:
Summary: Zany and Smart
Review: Having recently seen the movie IRIS, which detailed the writers battle with Alzheimer's, I was motivated to read one of her works. Suppossedly she was a novelist/philsopher but,if 'Under the Net' contained any grandiose phillisophical theories, I must have missed them. But I accept the fact that Ms. Murdoch must have been one of the finest minds of her era. I found the novel fast paced and easy to read and the humor, typical of the British, very subtle.It was interseting that a female author would have a male protagonist and narrator. The hero, Jake Donahue, is a frustrated author turned interpretter of foreign novels. He is displaced from his residence by his landlady/lover and,in his attempt to find another place to live, he is reunited with an ex-lover and in the process is re-introduced to several other people from his past. In the midst of Jake's search for his own self worth, he comes into contact with several intersting people in both the world of books and films. In one of the most light hearted episodes, Jake and his cronies, Dave and Finn, manage to kidnap a dog film star and Jake becomes the aging dog's protector. Through his protection of the dog, Jake uncovers in himself a gentler side that he did not know existed. Whether Jake's misfortunes are due to betrayl by his friends or by his own stubborness and laziness is not quite clear. However at the end the reader has the sense that Jake is truly a better person for all his travails.
Rating:
Summary: Zany and Smart
Review: I cannot but think of "Under the Net" and smile and it is for this reason that I'm so endeared to Murdoch's gem of book. The last time I really laughed out loud while reading a novel was Don Delillo's "White Noise". Behind all the zany situations and comedic characterization is a smart, strangely gratifying take on life. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: not all that great
Review: In this uncomfortable blend of existentialism and the picaresque novel, James "Jake" Donaghue is an aspiring, though incorrigibly lazy, writer. He makes a living, barely, by translating French works into English and he stays in the flats of friends. As the novel opens Jake is informed that he, and his man Friday, Peter "Finn" O'Finney, must move out of their current address, because Madge, who has been letting them stay there, has found herself a fiancé. Over the course of the rest of the book, the flat-broke Jake desperately seeks for ways to avoid having to do any work and for places to stay courtesy of his friends. Much of the story is taken up with his broken friendship with Hugo Belfounder, a philosopher turned moviemaker (apparently based on Ludwig Wittgenstein), whose theories Jake presented in somewhat bastardized form in one of the few books he actually wrote himself. Another subplot involves a dognapping of an animal which is an unlikely film-star. The book ends, as it began, with Jake broke, not writing, and looking for a place to stay. I suppose some of the scenarios in the book are amusing if you are British and are immersed in the works of philosophers like Wittgenstein. For the rest of us, it's all rather tedious. A picaresque where neither the central character nor any of the people he comes in contact with show any signs of personal growth and development seems an exercise in futility. Personally, I agree with the friend of Jake's who suggests : Society should take you by the neck and shake you and make you do a sensible job. Then in your evenings you would have the possibility to write a great book. To the extent that Jake in this sense embodies all of England between the Wars and the rise of Margaret Thatcher, I suppose you could interpret the book as depicting the adverse effects of the dole mentality on British culture. But Iris Murdoch apparently intends the book to convey a somewhat more existentialist message. As she says : All work and all love, the search for wealth and fame, the search for truth, like itself, are made up of moments which pass and become nothing. Yet through this shaft of nothings we drive onward with that miraculous vitality that creates our precarious habitations in the past and future. So we live; a spirit that broods and hovers over the continual death of time, the lost meaning, the unrecaptured moment, the unremembered face, until the final chop that ends all our moments and plunges that spirit back into the void from which it came. Here I come back to my eternal quarrel with existentialism : if it's all pointless anyway, then why in the name of God do you spend your time writing about it, and for what earthly reason should I waste my time reading what you write ? I must admit myself to be at a complete loss to explain the presence of this novel on the Modern Library Top 100 list. Luckily, we'll all be disappearing into the void soon, so we need not trouble ourselves over the matter. GRADE : D+
Rating: 
Summary: 3.5 stars out of 5
Review: Published in 1954, Under the Net is an entertaining novel about one season in Jake Donaghue's life. Jake is a 30-ish writer in London whose specialty is translating French novels to English to earn money, which he hasn't much of, and he hasn't written anything original for sometime. Despite being semi-dependent on friends for survival (and a strong aversion for actual work), he seems very likeable, generous, loyal, and would not compromise his ideals for easy money. He is living everyone's romantic version of poverty, where everything works out and he's never actually desperate, in fact it's a bit too fantastic how he gets out of trouble sometimes, chasing one urgency (a long lost love or friendship he has to repair) after the next. But it's a feel good book because of that, and maybe in post-World War II London all this was not impossible. In the end, this very impressionable and impetuous character is more wise, has writing and employment plans, and is just as poor. Jake's fascinating friends also add entertainment - the social climbing Madge and her friendly/devious fiancé Sammie the bookie, Jake's strangely loyal "assistant" Finn, his socialist filmmaker friend Hugo, and the attractive Quentin sisters who are two corners of a sad, 4-way unrequited love structure. Something exciting or dangerous is always happening. The novel is also filled with nuggets of wisdom from Murdoch, that you can't help but feel she's pondered a lot on love, the intellectual life (vs. accomplishing work on a daily basis), and many other things. She describes swimming and judo with such zeal you feel it is something she has done, rather than just having researched on it. Perhaps it should not have been told in the first person because at times it does not sound like the thoughts of an immature male writer who is still finding himself, but someone wiser. It takes thirty pages (out of 286) to get going and I'm not sure everyone will relate to Jake's character, but it's certainly a worthwhile read.
Rating:
Summary: 3.5 stars out of 5
Review: Published in 1954, Under the Net is an entertaining novel about one season in Jake Donaghue's life. Jake is a 30-ish writer in London whose specialty is translating French novels to English to earn money, which he hasn't much of, and he hasn't written anything original for sometime. Despite being semi-dependent on friends for survival (and a strong aversion for actual work), he seems very likeable, generous, loyal, and would not compromise his ideals for easy money. He is living everyone's romantic version of poverty, where everything works out and he's never actually desperate, in fact it's a bit too fantastic how he gets out of trouble sometimes, chasing one urgency (a long lost love or friendship he has to repair) after the next. But it's a feel good book because of that, and maybe in post-World War II London all this was not impossible. In the end, this very impressionable and impetuous character is more wise, has writing and employment plans, and is just as poor. Jake's fascinating friends also add entertainment - the social climbing Madge and her friendly/devious fiancé Sammie the bookie, Jake's strangely loyal "assistant" Finn, his socialist filmmaker friend Hugo, and the attractive Quentin sisters who are two corners of a sad, 4-way unrequited love structure. Something exciting or dangerous is always happening. The novel is also filled with nuggets of wisdom from Murdoch, that you can't help but feel she's pondered a lot on love, the intellectual life (vs. accomplishing work on a daily basis), and many other things. She describes swimming and judo with such zeal you feel it is something she has done, rather than just having researched on it. Perhaps it should not have been told in the first person because at times it does not sound like the thoughts of an immature male writer who is still finding himself, but someone wiser. It takes thirty pages (out of 286) to get going and I'm not sure everyone will relate to Jake's character, but it's certainly a worthwhile read.
Rating:
Summary: What to do before you read this book
Review: The only reason I read this book was because it was no. 95 on the Modern Library panel's list of the 100 greatest novels in English in the 20th century. I had read Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea years ago (well, I finished it Dec 4, 1983, if you really want to know that) and had been underimpressed by it. I should have read the reviews on Under the Net on this site before I read it. That would have given me some clue to what I was supposed to expect and derive from the book. I am no student of Ludwig Wittgenstein, but if I had known that Hugo was supposed to be based on him, it might have made me more alert to what he did,e.g. But I read the book as I do any other, and I found it very unimpressive--and I know that is my fault, I suppose. So I guess what I am saying is that if existentialism, Wittgenstein, Sarte, Bellow, etc., don't get you very interested you might not enjoy this book. I found I was glad when I was nearing the end--tho I admit that the last ten pages I rather enjoyed!
Rating: 
Summary: What on earth did reviewers find humorous?
Review: This book is so pretentious, so show-offy, so geared to highly educated Oxbridge people, it clearly excludes the well-educated non academic reader. If you find drunkenness funny and the long descriptions of how drunkenness affects the body, I guess you will like this.
I had to read it for my book club but hated every page -- no favorite characters or episodes. I hate to think the entire British public lives to get drunk but this and other literature and movies forces me to believe that no event in Britain, celebratory or shocking, takes place without a glass in hand.
Rating:
Summary: perfect book for existentialist beer-lovers
Review: This is my favourite novel as strange as it is. Well, the fact is strange, not the novel. I read Murdoch's Unicorn and shrugged my shoulders. Read Black Prince and had a feeling that I had wasted my time. But Under the Net! - mmmm... A perfect book for young existentialist beer-lovers, who love dusty bookshops, who keep late hours and hate regular jobs. And, please, don't blaspheme this book by analysing it too much (like some sophisticated reviewers here tend to do). Enjoy the ride and have some beers with good friends instead. If you like deconstructing things to symbolic bits and pieces, read Camus instead.
Rating:
Summary: What a "Bildungsroman"!
Review: This isn't merely Murdoch's first novel, it is also (one of) her best. The story of the would-be writer Jake D. who struggles to find a proper literary philosophy to ignite his career, nicely reflects Murdoch's own intellectual struggles in writing "Under the Net". Although this might sound rather high-blown and tedious, it is not, for by mixing the philosophical musings with the picaresque form, Murdoch ensures that the story is highly dynamic and entertaining. We follow Jake through a series of bizarrely comic and breathtaking incidents, and observe how he develops his initial egoistical Sartrean world-view to a truer and more profound understanding of his fellow-beings. It is fascinating to watch how this development unveils Jake's pretentiousness and shapes him into a mature artist. In sum, this novel simply has and is everything, drama, farce, mask, satire etc. and Murdoch has mixed these elements with such dexterity that one can doubt whether she ever wrote a better book. In saying so it must also be emphasised that "Under the Net" foreshadows much of Murdoch's later work.
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