#murdoch_iris

Irish/British novelist and philosopher (1919-1999)

The subject of Murdoch's two dozen novels is personal politics: the ebb and flow of relationships, the way we manipulate others and are ourselves manipulated. The time is now; the people are middle-class, professional, usually from the English Home Counties -- and they are all bizarre, possessed by a demon which blurs reality and dream into a single, mesmeric state. Seduction, mysticism and moral disintegration are favourite themes, and the innocent late adolescent (whose effect on other people's lives is often devastating) is a standard character.

THE BELL  (1958) Should we live our lives by the conventions of society or moment by moment, defining ourselves by our own changing moods and enthusiasms? This question perplexes every character in The Bell: all are waiting for a sudden inspiration or discovery which will define their existence, show them how they should behave. The setting is a lay community housed in a former convent, a refuge for an eccentric collection of inmates whose peace is disturbed by the arrival of two amoral innocents', Dora and Toby. The Bell was popular in the hippie 1960s, and still seems to catch the wide-eyed, distracted mood of those times. But its story and characters are fascinating and its images (for example that of the nude, startlingly white-bodied Toby diving, like a fallen angel, into the murky convent lake to investigate a sunken bell) are as disturbing as they are unforgettable.

Murdoch's other novels include The Flight from the Enchanter, The Sandcastle, A Severed Head, The Red and the Green, The Time of the Angels, The Sea, The Sea, The Book and the Brotherhood, The Message to the Planet, The Green Knight and Jackson’s Dilemma.

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The Book and the Brotherhood

The Green Knight

To An Unofficial Rose : see also pathway

Antonia Byatt, The Virgin in the Garden Mary Flanagan, Trust Irene Handl, The Sioux Mary McCarthy, A Charmed Life D.M. Thomas, Birthstone Alice Thomas Ellis, The 27th Kingdom

Iris Murdoch, An Unofficial Rose

(nine people, all looking for love; nine intertwined, entangled lives)

Lure of the Exotic

Paul Theroux, The Mosquito Coast  (tired of US civilisation, man takes family "back to nature" in Ecuadorian jungle)

Olivia Manning, The Rain Forest  (young couple, psychically "lost", seek solace on magical, sinister tropical island)

Patrick White, Voss  (explorers "find" themselves by trekking across Australia; at home in Sydney, girl waits breathlessly for news)

Angus Wilson, The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot  (widow seeks happiness by surrendering to impulse, going on haphazard Far Eastern odyssey)

Rosamond Lehmann, A Sea-Grape Tree  (deserted wife seeks spiritual and psychic reassurance on Caribbean island)

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits  (Trueba family women, over four generations, order their lives by magic, fantasy and psychic communion rather than as their patriarch ordains)

Searching for Self

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse  (thoughts and memories of large close family on holiday: projected day-trip to a lighthouse focuses each of their lives)

Lisa St Aubin de Terán, The Bay of Silence  (apparently happy, successful film actress haunted by schizophrenia)

Christopher Isherwood, A Meeting By the River  (two brothers, extranged and "lost", find Buddhism, true love and tranquility of soul)

Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf  (lonely middle-aged recluse "rehabilitated" spiritually by three mystical, possibly fantasy young people)

Lawrence Durrell, The Dark Labyrinth/Cefalù  (group of tourists enter Cretan labyrinth in search of psychic identity - and each quest is unexpectedly fulfilled)

Eleanor Dark, Return to Coolami  (four people motoring in Australian outback discover themselves)

Women Alone

Jenny Diski, Rainforest  (professor tries to stop intellectual meticuluosness destroying emotional life)

Anita Brookner, A Misalliance  (divorced woman, keeping up facade of busy, fulfilled existence, is troubled by chaotic emotional life of people she meets)

Bernice Rubens, Our Father  (archeologist"s meeting with God in Sahara triggers a search of her past and the relationship between her charismatic, enigmatic parents)

Susan Hill, In the Springtime of the Year  (young widow "rehabilitated" from grief by calm rhythms of country life)

Jane Gardam, Crusoe"s Daughter  (Robinson Crusoe gives lonely woman purpose in life and grasp on sanity)