Laura's Review - The Book and the Brotherhood

When a group of middle-aged Oxford school friends reconnects at a gala summer ball, they set in motion a series of events that forever change their relationships with one another. When Jean Cambus dances with David Crimond an old flame is rekindled, Jean's husband Duncan gets into an argument with Crimond, and Jean ends up leaving Duncan for Crimond (for the second time, in fact).

The rest of the group is stunned. Their personal and collective responses offer a way for Murdoch to explore various archetypes and relationships. The cast is rich and varied. Gerard Hernshaw views himself as somewhat in charge, but is tormented by childhood loss and a general sense of emptiness. His sister and brother-in-law have moved into his house and are increasingly putting down roots, but Gerard is unable to confront them. Rose Curtland has always loved Gerard but never acted on her feelings. Jenkin Riderhood is a quiet, unattached schoolmaster; Lily Boyne attends the ball as Crimond's date. Gulliver Ashe is a younger man who has been unable to find a job, and Tamar Hernshaw, Gerard's niece, is younger still.

Several years earlier, the group formed a "brotherhood" to finance Crimond's effort to write a political book, but the book has yet to be published. Each member of the brotherhood pays their annual dues, but demands nothing from Crimond; they are reluctant even to approach him about his progress. Even Jean cannot speak to him about it. And while this drama is in progress, several other subplots unfold involving the other characters. Tamar's youthful naiveté and conflicted relationship with her mother lead her into a situation with significant personal consequences. Gerard takes steps towards a relationship he never thought possible. Rose faces her spinsterhood with a stiff upper lip.

And then there's Crimond, the only character consistently referred to only by his surname. Arrogant and detached, when he finally finishes his book he loses his sense of purpose. He tries to engage Jean in some shocking behavior that culminates in one of the novel's most harrowing scenes. And there's still more dramatic tension as Crimond goes a bit off his rocker. Tragic events follow, made even more so as each member of the "brotherhood" feels somewhat at fault. One by one, Murdoch gets into their heads as they examine their role, dwelling on small actions that led to other actions that ultimately led to the tragedy.

The Book and the Brotherhood also serves as a forum for Murdoch's own ideology, which I admit often goes over my head. I enjoyed the character-driven nature of this book much more. I also felt it went on a bit long, and some of the subplots could have been resolved more quickly. Taken as a whole, this was fairly representative of Murdoch's work, even if it wasn't my favorite.



Cross-posted from my blog

Laura's Review - The Good Apprentice

Iris, you let me down on this one. Having read nine of your novels, I've come to expect three elements in perfect balance: strong characterizations, especially of hapless or arrogant male protagonists, moral dilemmas, and a certain "talkiness" in the prose. The Good Apprentice had all these elements, but they were out of balance and failed to deliver an enjoyable reading experience.

Murdoch's protagonist is Edward Baltram, a young man who played a prank that went horribly wrong and resulted in a friend's death (this is not a spoiler; it happens in the first few pages). Edward is fortunate not to be charged with a crime, but he is devastated and knows his life is permanently changed. His family throws a dinner party to help him "get over it," which is mostly a way for Murdoch to introduce a broad cast of characters. We meet his stepfather Harry, Harry's son Stuart, Edward's aunt Midge and uncle Tom, and Ursula, the family physician. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the dinner party fails to lift Edward's spirits. He decides he'll escape to the country and reunite with his biological father Jesse, and Jesse's wife and adult daughters.

Flip ahead about 100 pages, and you'll find Edward settled in Jesse's house, surrounded by quirky relatives and still wandering around morose and confused. And you'll also find Stuart, a religious fanatic, in endless philosophical dialogue with Tom, and Midge thinking way too much about how to shorten a dress and insert a new panel of fabric.

Amazon calls this book, "Funny and compelling, ... at once a supremely sophisticated entertainment and an inquiry into the spiritual crises that afflict the modern world." Sorry, but I found it repetitive and boring. I'm sure Murdoch's symbolism and ideas become clearer by the end of the book, but I just didn't have the patience to struggle through more than 550 pages.

(DNF)


Cross-posted from my blog

Laura's Review - The Black Prince

Bradley Pearson is a marginally successful author well past his professional prime, who fancies himself much more talented and good-looking than he is. At the beginning of the novel Bradley is preparing to leave on holiday, sure that a change of scene will inspire him to write his greatest work. But barriers arise in rapid succession, as he learns of his ex-wife's arrival in London, his friend Arnold Baffin calls asking for help resolving a quarrel with his wife Rachel, and his sister Priscilla breaks down after trouble with her husband. Bradley immediately falls into "fix-it" mode, but every act has consequences. Watching Bradley is like watching a row of dominoes fall. And then Bradley becomes positively delusional, falling head over heels for a much younger woman and being just arrogant enough to think the relationship will work.

Iris Murdoch's characterizations are brilliant. Bradley is a bumbling fool but doesn't know it. Rachel and Priscilla are women of a certain age, each with her own set of neuroses. Rachel and Arnold's relationship is typical of many long marriages, but Bradley fails to understand how two people are angry or frustrated with one another without fracturing the strong bond between them. I also love Murdoch's ability to describe the ordinary in such extraordinary ways:

The division of one day from the next must be one of the most profound peculiarities on this planet. It is, on the whole, a merciful arrangement. We are not condemned to sustained flights of being, but are constantly refreshed by little holidays from ourselves. We are intermittent creatures, always falling to little ends and rising to little new beginnings. Our soon-tired consciousness is meted out in chapters, and that the world will look quite different tomorrow is, both for our comfort and our discomfort, usually true. How marvellously too night matches sleep, sweet image of it, so neatly apportioned to our need. (p. 232)

The Black Prince has a very interesting structure. Bradley's story is written in the first person, as if he is telling it to the book's editor, who wrote a "foreword" to this book. A second foreword, written by Bradley, provides the reader with his personal history. After Bradley's story is complete, four important characters offer postscripts. These not only supply a denouement, they also shed entirely new light on everything that was written before. It turns out Bradley is one of the most unreliable narrators I've ever experienced. The plot twists at the end sent me off in search of earlier passages, to re-read in a new light. I'm still puzzling through the intricacies of this book, which is why Iris Murdoch is one of my favorite authors.




Cross-posted from my blog

Laura's Review - Bruno's Dream

Iris Murdoch has a unique take on the human condition. Her books typically feature normal, everyday people making normal, everyday decisions -- but invariably some of those decisions turn out to be stupid ones, with consequences. Most of the time, the "stupid decisions" deal with sexuality or morality. In some ways, reading Murdoch is like watching a train wreck unfold before your eyes. And yet, her books fascinate me, every single time.

Bruno's Dream was Murdoch's twelfth novel, and her second shortlisted for The Booker Prize (in 1970). The title character is an elderly, bedridden man nearing the end of his life. He spends his days poring over his stamp collection, reading books about spiders, and waiting for daily rituals like tea, the newspaper, and champagne. Bruno lives with his son-in-law Danby (his daughter Gwen died several years earlier). Danby's household also includes Nigel, a nurse, and Adelaide, a maid. Bruno has been estranged from his son Miles, his only living relative, ever since they fell out over Miles' first wife, an Indian woman:

If only certain things had not been said. One says things hastily, without meaning them, without having thought, without understanding them even. One ought to be forgiven for those hasty things. It was so unfair to have been made to carry the moral burden of his careless talk, to carry it for years until it became a monstrous unwilled part of himself. He had not wanted Miles to marry an Indian girl. But how soon he would have forgotten his theories when confronted with a real girl. If only they had all ignored his remarks, if only they had made him meet Parvati, let him meet Parvati, instead of flying off and building up his offence into a permanent barrier. If they had only been gentle with him and reasoned with him instead of getting so highminded and angry. It all happened so quickly, and then he had been given his role and condemned for it. And Miles said he had said all those things he was sure he had never said. There were so many misunderstandings.

Now Miles is married to Diana, whom Bruno has never met. Diana's sister Lisa lives with Miles and Diana. Bruno expresses a wish to see his son again, and asks Danby to call on Miles and convince him to visit Bruno. Danby's visit sets in motion a series of everyday actions and decisions that tangle all the characters up in one another's lives. In this story, the king of stupid decisions is Danby, who lusts after anything in a skirt and feels compelled to act on his impulses. Miles isn't much better, and the two of them create fantastic situations ranging from poignant to irritating to funny. Also typical of Murdoch is the way most of the male characters are misguided and insensitive, and most of the women are rational and emotionally strong. In Bruno's Dream, the stronger women rise above everyone else to unravel the tangle caused mostly by Danby and Miles, and bring dignity to Bruno's last weeks.



* FTC Disclosure: This e-book was sent to me by the publisher, Open Road Media, for review on my blog.

Cross-posted from my blog

Laura's Review - The Nice and the Good

The Nice and the Good opens with a suicide in a London government office. The department head, Octavian Gray, asks lawyer John Ducane to investigate the situation and any potential security breaches. Ducane then becomes the axis of rotation for the rest of the extensive dramatis personae in this book. Ducane interviews other members of the department by day, and by night attempts repeatedly -- and unsuccessfully -- to break up with his mistress. No one is quite what they seem.

On the weekends, he is often found at Gray's seaside home in Dorset, where he mingles primarily with women: Octavian's wife Kate and their teenage daughter Barbie, Kate's long-time friend Mary and her son Pierce, and recent divorcee Paula and her nine-year-old twins. Rounding out the group are Octavian's brother Theodore and a tenant, Willy Kost. Here as well, everyone has skeletons in their closet: why did Theodore leave India? What happened to Willy during the war? How did Mary's husband die? What are the circumstances behind Paula's divorce? How can Kate and Ducane carry on their bizarre, not-platonic-but-not-romantic relationship right under Octavian's nose, and with his full knowledge?

Murdoch uses Ducane to move seamlessly between London and Dorset, while exploring goodness and morality:

What Ducane was experiencing, in this form peculiar to him of imagining himself as a judge, was, though this was not entirely clear in his mind, one of the great paradoxes of morality, namely, that in order to become good it may be necessary to imagine oneself good, and yet such imagining may also be the very thing which renders improvement impossible, either because of surreptitious complacency or because of some deeper blasphemous infection which is set up when goodness it thought about in the wrong way. To become good it may be necessary to think about virtue, although unreflective simple people may achieve a thoughtless excellence. (p. 77)

Well, that's all a bit abstract. If I had been in a more deeply philosophical mood as I read this, I might have formed some profound thoughts about morality. Instead, I just enjoyed the twisting plot and the gradual revelation of secrets. This was philosophical, too, but in a different way: Murdoch's style inevitably involves a lot of personal reflection and talking things out. The denouement was neat and satisfying, with a bit of high drama, characters getting exactly what they deserved, and an air of hope.



Cross-posted from my blog.

June Starr: 1969 short list review

Laura suggested that this sort of review might be useful to Complete Booker fans and participants. Maybe you have different ideas about what book should have won, if you've read the list. I think Laura was hoping this might generate some nice discussion. At any rate, let me know what you think. I'm reading all of the short lists in the coming year (or so). The links are to individual reviews at my Reading the Bookers site, where this wrap-up also appears.

**********

As I indicated in the post on Something to Answer For, that novel makes sense to me as the inaugural Booker Prize winner, though the field is certainly strong.

Mosley’s Impossible Object gives us a stylistic experiment, shifting angles of view and playing with chronology in his account of a love affair and its aftermath. Williams’s From Scenes Like These gives us a vision of lower-class Scottish life as the nation is transformed through increasing industrialism. Spark’s The Public Image gives us a cold, cinematic look into the lives behind movie-star glamour and public relations. England’s Figures in a Landscape gives us a deeply present account of contemporary war. Murdoch’s The Nice and the Good gives us a more traditional if philosophically sophisticated study of love and relationships.

All of the novels engage with if not the immediate present, then at least with the era in which their books are written—with attention to the morals and mores of the time—particularly in their attitudes toward love, relationships, and identity. All suggest a culture in flux, with old certainties—about national and personal identity, war, love, and ways of life--giving way to uncertainty and anxiety.

All of the works, with the exception of Murdoch’s, seem to me to be unsettled and unsettling in a variety of ways. And while I truly loved Figures in a Landscape, Something to Answer For tackles post-colonial themes through historically located action, tragic love, and experimentation. The main character’s cynicism and naivete speak to Britain’s place and identity in the world, while he deals with politics at the personal, national, and international level. The head injury he sustains gives the book the hallucinatory quality that underscores the uncertain present and future that the book's events describe while also making the past real and resonant. Plus—the novel is both readable and stylistically adventurous, not an easy combination to pull off.

Good inaugural choice, Booker committee. Let’s see if next year's committee can hold off the sophomore slump.

Review: The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch (1978 winner)

The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch is a novel about an aging theater icon who retires to the North Sea coast of England. It is a wonderful, fantastic story, about long-lasting attachments between people and the ideas that hold them together.

Murdoch is known as a philosophic writer and there is not a lot of action in this book. But she knows how to pace the story to keep it entertaining. She parses out what action there is, so just when it starts to seem too talky, something startling happens to capture the reader's attention.

Charles Arrowby was a famous playwright, actor, and director who, in retirement, seeks solitude in a funky, spooky old house perched on seaside cliffs. The story is told through his journal, which contains observations on his present as well as self-serving, only sometimes honest, reminiscences on his past.

While Charles seeks to put the theater life behind him, his life is theater. When former lovers, friends old and new, and even his Buddhist cousin turn up at his isolated retreat, Charles can’t help but manipulate and bully them into being a part of his one-man show. He treats the people in his life like he treated the audiences he mused on in this passage:

The theatre is an attack on mankind carried on by magic: to victimize an audience every night, to make them laugh and cry and suffer and miss their trains. Of course actors regard audiences as enemies, to be deceived, drugged, incarcerated, stupefied.

In the end, things do not work out as Charles planned, which only shows that Murdoch was much wiser than her narrator.

This is a wonderful, engrossing book, well deserving of its Booker prize.

(This review is also posted on Rose City Reader.)

June Starr: Irish Murdoch's The Nice and the Good (1969 short list)

Hi, Bookers. I'm June Starr and for the next year at my blog Reading the Bookers, I'll be reviewing all of the books short-listed for the Bookers from the prize's inception to the present. Don't worry, I won't be posting every review here, but Laura persuaded me to post on a couple of Iris Murdoch novels I just read.

Read this review of The Nice and the Good before moving on to the one on Bruno's Dream below. They'll make more sense that way.

Thanks for having me here. I'm looking forward to being a member of the community.

June

And now--Iris Murdoch.

I had a thing for Iris Murdoch after I finished The Sea, The Sea in 2001. I decided to read all of 26 of her novels. I bought and read Under the Net and The Bell before I got too busy and my intentions faded away--to be revived, I imagined, during some mythical lazy summer (when I would also finally learn German. That’s another story). Since Murdoch has been the most frequently short-listed writer for the Booker with seven nominations (and one win), it looks like that revival is now in order. I’m looking forward to rereading The Sea, The Sea—since I remember NOTHING about it at this point beyond the fact that it was my favorite novel for awhile. I’ll be interested in seeing if I’m still smitten this time through.

But that’s another shortlist—1978’s to be exact—so let’s get back to the matter at hand: The Nice and the Good. Which I also liked very much.

For one thing, the novel is right up my alley: a big, shaggy realistic novel with lots of characters who talk and think their way through a variety of interpersonal dilemmas.* The Nice and the Good has a cast of characters so big that the publishers put a “playbill of the principals” on the flyleaf for handy reference. Since Murdoch is herself a philosopher, it’s no surprise that there’s thought and discussion aplenty. Characters contemplate themselves and others, mulling over their own sense of integrity and identity, their motivations and behavior, and, as the title promises, over what “separates the nice from the good” in both “the self-seeking and the blank impersonal face” of love (378, flyleaf).

The novel begins on a violent note—with the apparent suicide of British government official, Joseph Radeechy. But while uncovering the facts surrounding Radeechy’s death gives the book a plot to work with, his death is less important than the effects it has on other characters, most of whom knew him little, if at all. Radeechy works in a Whitehall department for Octavian Gray--and it is Octavian’s friend and department legal advisor John Ducane, who must solve the mystery of the man’s death. In love with Octavian’s wife, Kate (with Octavian’s full knowledge and approval!), Ducane is a frequent visitor to the Grays’ Dorset seaside estate, where the couple resides with their daughter Barbara, Octavian’s misanthropic brother, Theo, and a variety of other needful friends—Holocaust survivor Willy, widow Mary Clothier and her son Pierce, and divorcee Paula Biranne and her 9-year-old twins Edward and Henrietta.

None of these characters is defined in and of themselves but primarily in relation to others--on the estate, in Whitehall and greater London, and beyond. Through what becomes a rather dizzying array of relationships, Murdoch explores the variety of profiles that love may show. Couples separate, reunite, change partners, remain constant; individuals plead for love, accept and reject proposals and companionship. Whatever the pain and confusion, or even the shame and infamy, that such intimate negotiations occasion, Murdoch insists that without them, life is a shabby thing.

Late in the novel, Murdoch puts Ducane in a life-threatening situation--interestingly unconnected from the Radeechy plot--so that he may come to this conclusion about his own life and his role in the Radeechy plot:

I wonder if this is the end, . . . and if so what it will all have amounted to. How tawdry and small it has all been. He saw himself now as a little rat, a busy little scurrying rat, seeking out its own little advantages and comforts. To live easily, to have cozy familiar pleasures, to be well thought of. . . . Nothing is worth doing except to kill the little rat, not to judge, not to be superior, not to exercise power, not to seek, seek, seek. To love and to reconcile and to forgive, only this matters. All power is sin and all law is frailty. Love is the only justice. Forgiveness, reconciliation, not law. (328-29)

This position leads us to the sort of Shakespearean comic ending hinted at in the flyleaf playbill and the allusively named Grays,** with plenty of marriage (or its equivalent) and good fortune to go around.

Murdoch is great at probing the inner life. She makes us recognize how an idea can obsess and rule us—despite our understanding of its negative effects; she makes us appreciate the importance of our own conceptions of ourselves and what happens when we are forced to interrogate those conceptions. She knows that identity encompasses more than we might imagine, and that we must look to others as well as to ourselves to know it.

As I said above—right up my alley. Let the Murdoch revival begin!


* If they spend most of their time indoors, that’s also a plus, though not mandatory. I’m not big on rapturous or even detailed descriptions of landscapes. I don’t mind a few walks and picnics, or some contemplation by the sea, all of which feature in The Nice and the Good, but I generally prefer to experience my scenery in person. That’s one reason I was so surprised to love Barry England’s Figures in a Landscape. The lead characters there, McConnachie and Ansell, are only indoors long enough to steal a suitcase and some canned goods.

**Octavian and Kate sure sound Shakespearean to me.

June Starr: Iris Murdoch's Bruno's Dream (1970 short list)

Since Murdoch had a novel on the 1970 short list, I thought I’d read it directly after finishing The Nice and the Good. I thought the comparison might be interesting and I certainly enjoyed my double dose of Murdoch.

One thing I liked about Bruno’s Dream is the sly way that Murdoch plays with the form and readers’ expectations about novels and their plots. We think this novel is going to be about a dying old man, Bruno, and his estranged son, Miles, reestablishing a relationship--but it isn’t. That relationship never really reasserts itself in the ways we might have forecast. And from this initial misdirection, Murdoch adds others, actively diffusing her plot even as she builds it: Various intrigues surrounding a valuable stamp collection come to nothing. Love affairs and their revelations do not issue in crises and big moments. Anticipated consequences give way to more unexpected, and usually much quieter developments and scenes.

Plus, there’s a flood.

As in The Nice and the Good, Murdoch gives us another large cast of characters, brought together by the demands of taking care of the bedridden Bruno: widowed Danby, the son-in-law with whom he lives; Adelaide, Danby’s housekeeper/girlfriend; her cousins Will and Nigel; Miles and his second wife, Diana; and her sister Lisa. All are disappointed or lost in some way, making due and marking time, unable to escape themselves or move forward. As Nigel (whom Murdoch makes a sort of zen master nurse) tells Diana when Miles forsakes her: “A human being hardly ever thinks about other people. He contemplates fantasms which resemble them and which he has decked out for his own purposes” (239). The only ways out of the stagnant solipsism and misery that afflict pretty much everyone in the novel, according to Murdoch, are love and forgiveness.

Love and forgiveness a la The Nice and the Good, are again what we get at the end--in a flurry of marriages and reconciliations. Murdoch may have liked to tweak the form and upset reader expectations but she clearly liked herself some happy endings, too.

I'll be reviewing all of the Booker short-listed books in the coming year at Reading the Bookers.

The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch

An ageing man gives up his glamorous life in London as an eminent theatre director, moves into an odd house on the coast, and picks up his pen with the intention of 'finding' his 'form' and exploring what has been and will be his life. The man has a few strange episodes at the start of the book relating to peculiar visions and ghostly activity, but the story is quickly overtaken by a series of increasingly incredible events the centre on him finding his long lost childhood sweetheart.

The sea, the sea is too long by far. The novel's charm comes from the daily occupations of a man seemingly seeking something akin to solitude or peace - his daily encounters with the sea, his domestication of the rocks surrounding his house, the meticulous descriptions of his particular brand of culinary activity. In these details, the novel sings. The story, though, is curiously constructed - it starts like a ghost story, quickly shifts into a somewhat farcical drama and then becomes a meditation on spirituality. The house is at times phantasmic, though it never truly fulfils its potential as a force to be reckoned with. The central plot - the overlong 'history' section - is ridiculous, and brings out all that is unbearable in Charles, the protagonist. By chance, he meets again his childhood sweetheart, who left him some forty five years earlier. He decides that he has another chance to pursue her, that they may find happiness with one another again, and he hatches elaborate plots to determine ways to meet her, to ensnare her, to 'rescue' her. She, however, has no intention of being rescued, has no notion that things might be different, and at the apex of the silliness, when Charles has her held against her will in his house, there are a number of very tedious exchanges in which Charles fails to listen to anything she says, and in which she fails to say anything rational or convincing. This farce ruins what has the makings of a great novel: many of the peripheral characters are interesting and colourful; the setting is evocative, menacing and powerful; and the context of the protagonist seeking a retreat but ending up with something different has potential. The ending is a reward for the feat of endurance to get through the book, but its potency is all but destroyed by the preceeding nonsense.

Sadly, I think this novel tries to be too many things, and as a result, fails to find a focused 'form' - which throws an odd light Charles' explicit intention to allow the writing to find its own form.

Iris Murdoch: the sea, the sea

This is the first time I have read a book by Murdoch, as I have previously been a little frightened by Murdoch's reputation as an intellectual.

The book is written in the form of a diary, kept by Charles Arrowby, theatre actor turned director, retired to an isolated neglected house on the edge of the sea. The plot is fairly brief; Charles recognises one of his neighbors as childhood love who had run from him forty years before, and obsessively pursues her. The main body of the writing (502 pages of small type) is description, of Charles's moods, thoughts, worries, meals, and of the sea, the rocks and the weather.

There is a sense of unease about Charles. Shortly after the narrative begins he spots a huge sea serpent off the cost by his house, writhing in coils above the sea, which remains unexplained. There are strange rooms in his house. There are continual shadows, faces, drafts, noises, rustlings and clickings about the house, and there is no electricity, so nights are dark except for candles, oil lamps, firelight. The very residents of the area are hostile to Charles, for no reason.

The book charts Charles' loss of control over his life. At the beginning he schemes and influences past loves by letter, bringing them back into his life, deciding who to disrupt, who to hurt. Then he sees Hartley, and it all changes. He schemes as before, but he has miscalculated; Hartley does not want him, something he cannot conceive of, so all his plans go awry. As he continues to focus on Hartley, he loses control over all the other people in his life, who make plans without him, who change how they relate to him. Revelations are made, relationships he broke apart are mended, people he thought he disliked out turn out to be vitally important to him.

I really enjoyed this book, though I did tire of Charles Arrowby. This is another book written in the first person, and I admit that I was speed reading through the pages at the end, not wanting to miss anything that was happening, but keen to skim over more of Charles' ruminations.

I had an interest in Titus. As soon as his name was mentioned I felt that it had occurred before in the book in relation to Charles, though I can't now find it. Titus is a theatre name isn't it? It doesn't really belong in the world of Roy and Mary. And Titus is red haired; Lizzie was described as having red hair, and her description is like the description of Titus. Charles grows a red beard at the end of the book. I wondered if those were hints that in the cruelest of ironies, Titus actually was Charles's son.

The best bit of the book for me was during the kidnapping of Mary/Hartley, when the novel became a farce, with everyone turning up at the door, and Charles' house of cards falling round his ears.

I have not yet decided if I would read more Murdoch. I did enjoy this book, and though it was very long, and to some extent wearying, there really wasn't a wasted word.

1978 - The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch

The narrator of The Sea, The Sea is Charles Arrowby, an unreliable narrator extraordinaire! He's an aging actor/director, who decides to retire to peaceful solitude by the sea, a fantasy beloved of so many. He buys a horrid little house called Shruff's End which is besieged by damp and void of amenities such as electricity and heating. Still, in summer the sea is lovely, and the weather is warm, and all seems well...

Murdoch's specialty is irony, and before long the reader becomes aware of Charles's egocentric view of the world. It takes only a little longer to realise that he is subject to delusions and powerful obsessions. He thinks that the whole theatrical world will be at his door disturbing him - and when they fail to turn up - he goes up to London to invite them!

Alas, they all come at once, the very weekend he plans to abduct his childhood sweetheart from her husband. Hartley Smith, now Mary Fitch, was as innocent childhood love (or so he tells us), and when she 'just happens' to live in the same village, his love for her is rekindled and he determines to rescue her from her 'brute' of a husband (who turns out to be handsome, and rather heroic, having done something very brave in the war).

By now, about half way through the book, the reader isn't sure whether any or all of the visitors are an illusion. Is Hartley real? Is she some other woman he has attached his fantasies to? Absurdity piles up on absurdity. Are we really meant to believe that Charles keeps Hartley locked in one room while he sleeps in another, content with minor fondlings? That James, Gilbert, Lizzie, Peregrine and Titus are all sleeping in serious discomfort in this bizarre household so that they can help him in his crazy conspiracy? And mad Rosina, is she real?

Well, finer minds than mine may make something else of it, but I don't think so. I think that Charles is down on his luck and can't afford his old lifestyle as work dries up. He has a romantic view of solitude but loneliness, drugs and cheap wine work together to form a soup of wild delusions. I think he's incapable of having a relationship with anybody and that it's significant that most of the characters (if they ever did actually exist) 'disappear' one way or another.

Did I like the book? I think it's a bit long and could have done with some of the editing that Murdoch reputedly resisted. I became rather weary of Charles (as I think I was meant to do) but the interminable conversations with Hartley were irritating, and the ending was disappointing. I'd have liked Charles to get his comeuppance!

I finished reading and journalled this book on 19.7.03
Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers

Trevor's Review of Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea

"I left in store with that first love so much of my innocence and gentleness which I later destroyed and denied, and which is yet now perhaps at last available again. Can a woman's ghost, after so many years, open the doors of the heart?"

This was my first time with Iris Murdoch, and I see why she was shortlisted so many times. I was drawn to her simple yet ellaborate prose, her fine rhythm, all bolstered by her expertise in psychology.
Here we have the memoirs of Charles Arrowby. The story he tells is brutal and haunting, not always on the surface but mostly in the characters' psyches. These poor people should not be dealing with each other, but somehow out of their interaction comes a sense not just of redemption but also of transcendence. After living a famous life in the theater, Arrowby moves to a small home by the sea and begins to write his memoirs. The first part of the novel is very much a day to day recitation of events--though thanks to Murdoch's insight and wit, even the food is interesting and important. The people from his past, however, don't leave him alone. In particular, he runs into his first love, a seemingly unhappily married old woman. He becomes obsessed with taking her away and begining the life they should have begun some forty years ealier.

"What indeed was I planning to do? I was in a state which I well knew was close to a sort of madness, and yet I was not mad. Some kinds of obsessions, of which being in love is one, paralyse the ordinary free-wheeling of the mind, its natural open interested curious mode of being, which is sometimes persuasively defined as rationality. I was sane enough to know that I was in a state of total obsession and that I could only think, over and over again, cetain agonizing thoughts, could only run continually along the same rat-paths of fantasy and intent. But I was not sane enough to interrupt this mechanical movement or even to desire to do so."

Arrowby is a despicable man--here he is telling a story that puts him and his life in such a high position that readers do not get to read the guilt, the pain, and the emptiness of his life, though it's there. Also, readers do not get a clear glimpse at the other characters because Charles himself does not fully comprehend those around him. While this may sound like a typical case of an unreliable narrator, Murdoch expertly uses this to explore the themes of egoism and jealousy, and even the unreliability of the whole narrative.

"Of course this chattering diary is a facade, the literary equivalent of the everyday smiling face which hids the inward ravages of jealousy, remorse, fear and the consciousness of irretrievable moral failure. Yet such pretenses are not only consolations but may even be productive of a little ersatz courage."

Murdoch is also a master of atmosphere: the bead curtain, the red room, the sea itself are all presences throughout the book. She uses them to great effect to create moods and to reflect the flow of the novel. There are some beautiful passages that I'd love to put into this review, but I will resist the temptation.
This book is not a straight forward story with a clear plot. One of the great things about this book is that whenever the narrator lets his reader know his intentions, he never complies, he never gets around to doing anything he says he is going to do. It's like a long list of failed plans. The symbolism and the psychology might not always be clear, but the book is worth exploring.
I give it 4/5.

Laura's Review - The Sea, the Sea

The Sea, the Sea
Iris Murdoch
495 pages


Charles Arrowby is a London theatre director who has recently retired to a seaside cottage in the south of England. He plans to write his memoirs, with particular focus on his lover-mentor, a woman named Clement. The book is written in the first person; Charles chronicles both day-to-day living in his cottage, and describes his life and loves. Vanity and jealousy are central themes. Charles spent his life immersed in theatre, entangled in complex relationships. His cousin James grew up in a more privileged environment and was a perennial cause of envy. Hartley was Charles' childhood sweetheart and, having been rejected by her as a young adult, Charles has been unable to deeply love anyone else. He toys with the affections of two actresses, Lizzie and Rosina, and fancies himself as having power over them when in fact, it is exactly the reverse.

The plot thickens when Charles meets up with Hartley, who surprisingly lives in the village near his cottage. She is married, with an adult son. But this does not stop Charles from pursuing her, and trying to re-create the happiness he felt as a teenager. Meanwhile James, Rosina, Lizzie, and others make frequent visits and try to talk sense into Charles. As Mary Kinzie writes in her introduction to the Penguin classic edition, Charles "violently and bullheadedly persists in all the wrong directions." None of his plans work out as he hopes. And as these plans unravel, he keeps trying to find another way to achieve his dreams. A climax of sorts occurs about 100 pages before the end, in which Peregrine, a theatre friend, calls him on his negative and manipulative behaviors: "You're an exploded myth. And you still think you're Genghis Khan! Laissez-moi rire. I can't think why I let you haunt me all these years. ... You never did anything for mankind, you never did anything for anybody except yourself." (p. 395)

Despite these character traits, Charles is not completely despicable. Iris Murdoch had a tremendous talent for portraying the middle-aged to older man and all his foibles, in a way that made the man mostly likeable. The Sea, the Sea also includes some interesting plot threads: Charles' pursuit of Hartley; Hartley's marriage; Hartley's son Titus; Charles' relationship with James, and so on. All in all, a satisfying read. ( )

My original review can be found here.