A dazzling novel that understandably won the Booker Prize in 1978. Charles Arrowby is a successful theatre director and playwright who retires to the sea and begins writing his memoirs. People from his past keep showing up and he is witness to strange, possibly supernatural events (I especially liked the haunted-house motifs). He discovers that his childhood sweetheart, Mary “Hartley” Fitch, is living nearby and embarks on an obsessive quest to claim her from her husband – even though it is made clear that she has not aged well.
In fact, we soon question Charles’ recollections altogether: was the couple’s entire youthful relationship something he had idealised and embellished over time? Is he truly infatuated or having some kind of delusional breakdown? Just how reliable is this narrator, who we often see more “objectively” through the eyes of his various visitors? As Charles’ obsession grows, the situation begins to spiral out of anyone’s control.
The sea is described wonderfully: almost a character in its own right. There’s also a lot about food (“Only a fool despises tomato ketchup,” he notes at one point). Iris Murdoch’s fiction often seems emotionally overwrought, but it’s actually that quality that I admire about her writing. Situations and relationships are examined in microscopic detail and with a spiritual, philosophical depth that other authors simply do not attempt. You know from the start that someone is going to drown in the sea, but it’s a mark of the tangled threads she weaves that you can never guess who.
As the book progresses, the plot takes increasingly surreal twists. Murdoch plays with elements of mysticism, melodrama and even farce as she works through to a resolution (of sorts). Like all great art, it works on multiple levels and leaves you thinking.
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