A Fairly Honourable Defeat (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

Rating:
Summary: A Fairly Intense Exploration of Love
Review: I first became a Murdoch fanatic in my 20s, and would gobble up her books like Oreo cookies. At the time I was dazzled: nobody wrote like her, with precise descriptions of physical and psychological terrain alike. Nobody made me laugh with delight with descriptions that were comic without being mean spirited. (I'm hard pressed to find a writer as brilliant.) In the past, I recommended this book to others with rave reviews-all the while certain that I had a lock on what it "meant." The characters alone are a hoot: You've got the Machivellian Julius, the sassy but silly Morgan, the calm but fuzzily ineffective Tallis. But there's also Rupert-whose writing a tome about philosophy and seeks to enlighten others. Add to that Simon, his gay brother, Hilda, Rupert's loving, slightly plump and aging wife. We don't really see her interior at all, and yet we know her, a droll, sweet and self-satisfied woman, and one who is about to face the shock of her life. The great characters and qualities that make ALL her books amazing are especially evident in this novel, with its sparkling wit, bold situations, and dryly humorous dialogue. Just to give you a taste, in one chapter, a character's clothing gets cut to shreds by an opponent,who leaves his foe literally naked and defenseless. Magically, this "scene" works and seems entirely believable. Few writers can pull that off. On a more serious note, "A Fairly Honorable Defeat" was always my favorite because of what it had to say about loving someone (e.g., truly noticing another and acting in their interest along with your own) vs. "using" them for whatever reason or out of whatever weakness. What it has to say beyond that, I'm not entirely sure. Not that a lack of knowing interferes with the pleasure of reading. Besides, Murdoch the story teller is saying something different than any of the pompous things that come out of the mouths of MOST of her characters. All I have to say is, in this one, don't underestimate Tallis. Happy reading.

Rating:
Summary: Murdoch's monster
Review: Iris Murdoch's novels are addictive. Since a friend gave me a copy of "The Bell" a few months ago, I've read almost nothing but Murdoch--11 novels in all. In fact, I checked out six at one time from my university library so as soon as I finished one I could start on another. I've become a chain-reader. This one may be the best one so far. It's certainly the most chilling, if not the most riveting. It's a good place to start for the uninitiated because it's so incredibly engaging and entertaining, althougt not necessarily fun. All of the basic Murdoch elements are there--the complexity of love and life; the overwhelming essentialness of love to life; the frailties, faults, and follies of basically good people; the way the lives of good people can be wrecked by both their own carelessness and by intentional acts of evil; and despite all of this, an odd optimism that life is good and that all will be well. ... Julius is even more frightening, however, because you will recognize in him someone you know or have known. Although there are no monsters, ghosts, or serial killers, the book is as suspensful as any of the popular horror or crime novel that routinely makes the bestseller lists today. And no "romance" writer alive knows more about love and sex than Murdoch. I always finish Murdoch's books feeling unsettled but strangely satisfied and always awestruck by what she is able to do with plot, characters, ideas, and words. Put down your Stephen King, your John Grisham, or your Danielle Steel and pick up this book instead.

Rating:
Summary: Good Against Evil and the Consolations of Love.
Review: Iris Murdoch's novels cannot be fully appreciated nor savored in all of their richness without some awareness of her philosophical concerns.

This is the story of Morgan, whose return to London after a love affair in America with the sinister, mysterious and seductive (in every sense of the word) "Julius," brings her to the home of her sister Hilda and that sister's husband, Rupert. Their troubled son Peter makes an appearance; and Morgan also encounters her good but estranged husband, Tallis; and a lively circle of friends appears as well, including the gay couple Simon and Axel.

But then Julius returns. His seemingly quiet entry into the lives of these flawed, but oh-so human people, wreaks disaster and tragedy.

Dame Iris underscores and dramatizes her concern with the nature of evil as the expression of the human tendency to be seduced by the glamor of power and intelligence into abdicating simple and obvious duties of humanity. She illustrates her notion of love as a kind of powerful attention (or Kantian "Achtung") and an immersion in the reality of the moment and the Other; and goodness as the absence of selfish immersion in fantasy and escape or "muddle," and involvement in "concern" (Heidegger) or "engagement" (Sartre) with the pain of others.

This is a brilliant and wise book.