“The extreme beauty of the scene put me into an instant trance. It was always a trick of my nature to be subject to these sudden enchantments of the visible world, when a particular scene would become so radiant with form and reality as to snatch me out of myself and make me oblivious of all my purposes. Beauty is such self-forgetting.” (p.59)
This was 20p from Holborn library – astonishing value for money.
Plot: engraver Edmund Narraway learns that his mother has died and returns to his large family home to pay his respects. There, he finds his family in a state of extreme disarray. His brother is having an affair, as is his brother’s wife. Meanwhile, his niece is pregnant. Edmund soon becomes tangled up in their relationships, with his presence only complicating matters further.
As always with Iris Murdoch, there’s real intensity in these situations: every conversation seems highly charged. Every meeting has consequences. Every action has dramatic implications. It’s a short but thrilling novel that’s sadly not regarded as one of Murdoch’s best.
From the book jacket: “Against a hallucinatory background of water garden and camellia trees, real emotional violence keeps breaking out. Once again Miss Murdoch shows her extraordinary talent for keeping the story going and the reader guessing through a series of events which peel off layer after layer of delusion till the core is revealed.” I can only agree as regards the “hallucinatory background” but “keeping the story going” is damning this great writer with faint praise.
What an excellent edition. Library stock sales are my absolute favourite places to buy books, especially when they're these old school library editions. (Or what I assume is a library edition).
ReplyDeleteFor me, Iris M can be hit and miss. But when she hits, she's brilliant.