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The Nice and the Good
Iris Murdoch's richly peopled novel revolves round a happily married couple, Kate and Octavian, and the friends of all ages attached to their household in Dorset. The novel deals with love in its two aspects, the self-gratifying and the impersonal; - The Nice And The Good - as they are embodied in a fascinating array of paired characters. The Nice And The Good leads through stress and terror to a joyous and compassionate Midsummer Nights Dream conclusion, in which the couples all sort themselves out neatly and omnia vincit amor.
362 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
About the author
Iris Murdoch
106 books2,281 followersDame Jean Iris Murdoch
Irish-born British writer, university lecturer and prolific and highly professional novelist, Iris Murdoch dealt with everyday ethical or moral issues, sometimes in the light of myths. As a writer, she was a perfectionist who did not allow editors to change her text. Murdoch produced 26 novels in 40 years, the last written while she was suffering from Alzheimer disease.
"She wanted, through her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world--the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her first steps in the art of fiction." (John Bayley in Elegy for Iris, 1998)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Mur...
Irish-born British writer, university lecturer and prolific and highly professional novelist, Iris Murdoch dealt with everyday ethical or moral issues, sometimes in the light of myths. As a writer, she was a perfectionist who did not allow editors to change her text. Murdoch produced 26 novels in 40 years, the last written while she was suffering from Alzheimer disease.
"She wanted, through her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world--the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her first steps in the art of fiction." (John Bayley in Elegy for Iris, 1998)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Mur...
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August 13, 2024
TUTTO È BENE QUEL CHE FINISCE BENE
Angelo Bronzino: Venere, Cupido, Follia e Tempo (National Gallery di Londra). Un dettaglio del dipinto appare sulla copertina della prima edizione
Per un capo divisione che in un pomeriggio d’estate se ne sta lavorando tranquillamente nella sua stanza a Whitehall, l’inconfondibile fragore di uno sparo vicino è certo un’insolita ragione di disturbo.
Nell’ufficio di un qualche ministero un funzionario si suicida. Ma non lascia nessun messaggio d’addio. Mistero puro. Si tratta forse di spionaggio?
Il dirigente del dipartimento per il quale il morto lavorava decide di svolgere un’inchiesta interna.
Viene fuori che il suicida era dedito alla magia nera, nei cui rituali coinvolgeva donne nude, e che era sotto ricatto. Magari è proprio per questo che si è ucciso.
L’indagine fa emergere anche che una precedente morte era in realtà un omicidio mascherato e nascosto.
Fin qui il lato thriller del romanzo.
La mano nella mano i due bambini presero a correre verso casa nella tiepida dolcezza della pioggerella.
Poi c’è quello romantico-sentimentale, anche piuttosto divertente.
Il dirigente del funzionario suicida possiede una multiproprietà in campagna fuori Londra (nel Dorset) alla quale fanno capo amici, colleghi, mogli e figli ed ex mogli e amanti di gente che lavora nel ministero, tra cui il suicida e anche la prima vittima scoperta nel corso dell’indagine. La casa di campagna con le sue multipe residenze è un centro di aggregazione, gran parte dell’azione si svolge qui.
Ma c’è anche l’aspetto della magia ad arricchire un plot già bello corposo. E questa terza linea narrativa contempla oggetti volanti non identificati, una sirena marina: sì, proprio come quelle che tentarono di incantare Ulisse – la sirena non si vede, ma se ne parla, la si racconta. La sirena è collegata a una grotta sottomarina dove uno dei personaggi rischia di restare intrappolato e affogare.
Il palazzo di Whitehall inun aveduta dipinta da Hendrick Danckerts nel 1675.
Probabilmente è il romanzo di Murdoch dove trapela di più la sua passione per la filosofia (che era anche oggetto del suo insegnamento all’università di Oxford): ed emerge sin dal titolo che cita “i buoni” che introducono al Bene, alla questione morale, a come si possa praticare Bene e morale pur senza fede.
Nonostante il narcisismo connaturato all’essere umano, l’amore è forza trascinante che connette noi agli altri. Amore per il bello, e amore per il buono, per quello che di genuinamente buono può esistere in un essere umano. Amore che da piacere e amore metafisico. Amore dei sensi e della carne, e amore dello spirito, amore cosiddetto platonico.
Ma come dicevo, il romanzo è prima di tutto divertente, una commedia: un po’ sullo stile di alcune shakespeariane. Infatti, il suo sottotitolo potrebbe anche essere: sogno di una notte di mezza età. Ooops, volevo dire mezza estate.
Angelo Bronzino: Venere, Cupido, Follia e Tempo (National Gallery di Londra). Un dettaglio del dipinto appare sulla copertina della prima edizione
Per un capo divisione che in un pomeriggio d’estate se ne sta lavorando tranquillamente nella sua stanza a Whitehall, l’inconfondibile fragore di uno sparo vicino è certo un’insolita ragione di disturbo.
Nell’ufficio di un qualche ministero un funzionario si suicida. Ma non lascia nessun messaggio d’addio. Mistero puro. Si tratta forse di spionaggio?
Il dirigente del dipartimento per il quale il morto lavorava decide di svolgere un’inchiesta interna.
Viene fuori che il suicida era dedito alla magia nera, nei cui rituali coinvolgeva donne nude, e che era sotto ricatto. Magari è proprio per questo che si è ucciso.
L’indagine fa emergere anche che una precedente morte era in realtà un omicidio mascherato e nascosto.
Fin qui il lato thriller del romanzo.
La mano nella mano i due bambini presero a correre verso casa nella tiepida dolcezza della pioggerella.
Poi c’è quello romantico-sentimentale, anche piuttosto divertente.
Il dirigente del funzionario suicida possiede una multiproprietà in campagna fuori Londra (nel Dorset) alla quale fanno capo amici, colleghi, mogli e figli ed ex mogli e amanti di gente che lavora nel ministero, tra cui il suicida e anche la prima vittima scoperta nel corso dell’indagine. La casa di campagna con le sue multipe residenze è un centro di aggregazione, gran parte dell’azione si svolge qui.
Ma c’è anche l’aspetto della magia ad arricchire un plot già bello corposo. E questa terza linea narrativa contempla oggetti volanti non identificati, una sirena marina: sì, proprio come quelle che tentarono di incantare Ulisse – la sirena non si vede, ma se ne parla, la si racconta. La sirena è collegata a una grotta sottomarina dove uno dei personaggi rischia di restare intrappolato e affogare.
Il palazzo di Whitehall inun aveduta dipinta da Hendrick Danckerts nel 1675.
Probabilmente è il romanzo di Murdoch dove trapela di più la sua passione per la filosofia (che era anche oggetto del suo insegnamento all’università di Oxford): ed emerge sin dal titolo che cita “i buoni” che introducono al Bene, alla questione morale, a come si possa praticare Bene e morale pur senza fede.
Nonostante il narcisismo connaturato all’essere umano, l’amore è forza trascinante che connette noi agli altri. Amore per il bello, e amore per il buono, per quello che di genuinamente buono può esistere in un essere umano. Amore che da piacere e amore metafisico. Amore dei sensi e della carne, e amore dello spirito, amore cosiddetto platonico.
Ma come dicevo, il romanzo è prima di tutto divertente, una commedia: un po’ sullo stile di alcune shakespeariane. Infatti, il suo sottotitolo potrebbe anche essere: sogno di una notte di mezza età. Ooops, volevo dire mezza estate.
November 17, 2018
Much of the drama and action takes place in a beach house on the Dorset coast. A married couple with kids and several other unrelated people all live together because the woman of the house takes people in who are lost or need a place and makes them family. An uncle lives in the house and in an outbuilding, another man lives who was released after the war from Dachau concentration camp.
All these quirky personalities, and those of cooks and maids, bounce off each other within a lot of household hustle and bustle. With three women in the house as well as female children, the main character calls home his “harem.” The crowded beach house setting reminds me quite a bit of Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse.
The main theme of the book seems to be: can we make ourselves morally better? The main character prides himself on being a good person and bases his actions on what is the RIGHT thing to do. You know what they say about good intentions…So the author puts Mr. Righteous in the unfortunate position of being in love with a married woman. And she kind of loves him too. Their solution is to hang out together as much a possible; there’s no sex but they meet in the woods and exchange more-or-less chaste kisses. How long can this go on?
Meanwhile his other moral dilemma is breaking up with a woman friend in whom he has lost interest. But she’s madly in love with him. So he kind of partially breaks up with her, seeing her once a week. So this becomes a disastrous situation as you can imagine.
Another major character is set up as the opposite of the main character. He’s not only someone no one likes but he’s into demonic activities. He dresses in priest’s robes, holds black masses over nude women’s bodies and sacrifices pigeons.
Like other Murdoch novels (critics have complained of her ‘bizarre plot twists’) we have a suicide or maybe a murder and possible drownings. (A hazard of beach houses.) The novel opens with a gunshot. It looks like an office worker has committed suicide and the main character is put in charge of the investigation to keep it out of the press. Another character tries to blackmail several others.
Snippets I liked:
“We’ve got to simplify things. One has got to simplify one’s life.”
“I don’t see why. Suppose life just isn’t simple?”
“Well, it ought to be.”
A boring character (the uncle) attracts no notice from others. “…this lack of interest seemed to be caused in some positive way by Theo himself, as if he sent out rays which paralyzed other people’s concern about him. It was like a faculty of becoming invisible… as when someone said ‘There was nobody there. Oh well, yes, Theo was there.’”
“Kate, eternally and unreflectively happy herself, made Mary want happiness and startled her, by a sort of electrical contact, into the hope of it.”
“Chance is really harder to bear than mortality.”
I enjoyed the story; not her best novel, but a good read.
All these quirky personalities, and those of cooks and maids, bounce off each other within a lot of household hustle and bustle. With three women in the house as well as female children, the main character calls home his “harem.” The crowded beach house setting reminds me quite a bit of Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse.
The main theme of the book seems to be: can we make ourselves morally better? The main character prides himself on being a good person and bases his actions on what is the RIGHT thing to do. You know what they say about good intentions…So the author puts Mr. Righteous in the unfortunate position of being in love with a married woman. And she kind of loves him too. Their solution is to hang out together as much a possible; there’s no sex but they meet in the woods and exchange more-or-less chaste kisses. How long can this go on?
Meanwhile his other moral dilemma is breaking up with a woman friend in whom he has lost interest. But she’s madly in love with him. So he kind of partially breaks up with her, seeing her once a week. So this becomes a disastrous situation as you can imagine.
Another major character is set up as the opposite of the main character. He’s not only someone no one likes but he’s into demonic activities. He dresses in priest’s robes, holds black masses over nude women’s bodies and sacrifices pigeons.
Like other Murdoch novels (critics have complained of her ‘bizarre plot twists’) we have a suicide or maybe a murder and possible drownings. (A hazard of beach houses.) The novel opens with a gunshot. It looks like an office worker has committed suicide and the main character is put in charge of the investigation to keep it out of the press. Another character tries to blackmail several others.
Snippets I liked:
“We’ve got to simplify things. One has got to simplify one’s life.”
“I don’t see why. Suppose life just isn’t simple?”
“Well, it ought to be.”
A boring character (the uncle) attracts no notice from others. “…this lack of interest seemed to be caused in some positive way by Theo himself, as if he sent out rays which paralyzed other people’s concern about him. It was like a faculty of becoming invisible… as when someone said ‘There was nobody there. Oh well, yes, Theo was there.’”
“Kate, eternally and unreflectively happy herself, made Mary want happiness and startled her, by a sort of electrical contact, into the hope of it.”
“Chance is really harder to bear than mortality.”
I enjoyed the story; not her best novel, but a good read.
February 22, 2021
“But we were all jolly nervous and upset! We’re not used to death after lunch!”
Iris, you are brilliant! There is so much going on in this eminently readable novel. It’s
A light romp with a gaggle of characters in various stages of angst and despair,
A slowly unravelling mystery,
A bundle of unusual love stories, and
A philosophical treatise on the nature of good and evil
It begins at Octavian’s office in London, when a co-worker commits suicide under questionable circumstances. The mystery provides a plot line, but most of the action takes place in Dorset, where Octavian and his wife Kate have welcomed into their home a motley crew of generous and needy friends, children, and animals.
Kate likes to take in stray people and keep them around where she can “attend” to them. Ducane lies to his mistress and obsesses over a married woman. Paula has a “hard, cold dignity,” and Mary has the “air of a Victorian governess.” As the lives of these and many more characters unfold, we wonder, who is nice and who is good? Turns out it’s a complicated question that Murdoch helps us ponder.
Some of the characters are tortured by regrets.
“It was as if one’s guilt had been made into a tangible object and rammed into one’s guts.”
And some are desperately clinging to their relationships.
“If one loves what is so frail and mortal, if one loves and holds on, like a terrier holding on, must not one’s love become changed?”
But they’re all on a road of discovery, and what they find is fascinating.
“…she was like him, morally like in some way that was important. Her mode of being gave him a moral, even a metaphysical, confidence in the world, in the reality of goodness.”
Isn’t it true that what we’re drawn to in someone we love is the good we see in them? And that that attraction is stronger even than all of our emotions about them?
The insights are marvelous, but as with most things, the fun is in getting there. There’s lots of unexpected kisses, at least one tragic accident, a death-defying adventure (the dog plays a key role--yay), and a lot of pairing up at the end.
Philosophy has never been so much fun.
Iris, you are brilliant! There is so much going on in this eminently readable novel. It’s
A light romp with a gaggle of characters in various stages of angst and despair,
A slowly unravelling mystery,
A bundle of unusual love stories, and
A philosophical treatise on the nature of good and evil
It begins at Octavian’s office in London, when a co-worker commits suicide under questionable circumstances. The mystery provides a plot line, but most of the action takes place in Dorset, where Octavian and his wife Kate have welcomed into their home a motley crew of generous and needy friends, children, and animals.
Kate likes to take in stray people and keep them around where she can “attend” to them. Ducane lies to his mistress and obsesses over a married woman. Paula has a “hard, cold dignity,” and Mary has the “air of a Victorian governess.” As the lives of these and many more characters unfold, we wonder, who is nice and who is good? Turns out it’s a complicated question that Murdoch helps us ponder.
Some of the characters are tortured by regrets.
“It was as if one’s guilt had been made into a tangible object and rammed into one’s guts.”
And some are desperately clinging to their relationships.
“If one loves what is so frail and mortal, if one loves and holds on, like a terrier holding on, must not one’s love become changed?”
But they’re all on a road of discovery, and what they find is fascinating.
“…she was like him, morally like in some way that was important. Her mode of being gave him a moral, even a metaphysical, confidence in the world, in the reality of goodness.”
Isn’t it true that what we’re drawn to in someone we love is the good we see in them? And that that attraction is stronger even than all of our emotions about them?
The insights are marvelous, but as with most things, the fun is in getting there. There’s lots of unexpected kisses, at least one tragic accident, a death-defying adventure (the dog plays a key role--yay), and a lot of pairing up at the end.
Philosophy has never been so much fun.
April 17, 2009
I just don't know what it is with Iris Murdoch novels. I simply can't tell them apart. And I can't explain why. She's smart. She writes well. I like her, and I've read most of her books. I've got a good memory, and I can usually do this kind of thing. For example, I generally find it quite easy to say which Bond film a given incident belongs to. But Iris Murdoch? Sorry.
It's not just me either. I recall this incident at a party in Manchester, some time in the winter of 1977. I'd just gone through a phase of reading a lot of Murdoch, so it was all fresh in my memory. I was talking to this girl, that I'd just met and rather liked. She seemed to like me. She'd also read a lot of Murdoch. We had every reason to use our memories of Murdoch novels to deepen our new friendship.
And yet... neither of us could remember a damn thing about them. "Have you read The Nice and the Good?" I asked, or whichever novel it was. "Oh, is that the one with the blackmailer?" she replied. Damn! I couldn't remember. And neither could she. We tried several times, and it was always the same. We felt like idiots, and our relationship was over before it had even started.
But, don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming Iris. It's my fault, not hers.
It's not just me either. I recall this incident at a party in Manchester, some time in the winter of 1977. I'd just gone through a phase of reading a lot of Murdoch, so it was all fresh in my memory. I was talking to this girl, that I'd just met and rather liked. She seemed to like me. She'd also read a lot of Murdoch. We had every reason to use our memories of Murdoch novels to deepen our new friendship.
And yet... neither of us could remember a damn thing about them. "Have you read The Nice and the Good?" I asked, or whichever novel it was. "Oh, is that the one with the blackmailer?" she replied. Damn! I couldn't remember. And neither could she. We tried several times, and it was always the same. We felt like idiots, and our relationship was over before it had even started.
But, don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming Iris. It's my fault, not hers.
September 10, 2019
This book made me ponder on the notions of “nice” and “good”. One could easily say that they are interchangeable without thinking very deeply about them. But are they really? Does being good also imply being nice and the other way around?
If I check the dictionary, nice means pleasing, agreeable, delightful, but also showing tact, care or delicacy. So, being nice is mostly a show-off, it is a way of making the others like you, it is a show one puts up for someone else’s eyes. Good, on the other hand, means morally excellent, righteous, of high quality, therefore an intrinsic quality that one has or does not have. One can be good at heart and not seem particularly nice to others as one might not correspond to what the social boundaries make people accustomed to. "Nice" is a decision, while "good" comes from the heart.
Murdoch illustrates the concepts of “nice” and “good” in a very humorous and witty manner. I don’t remember the exact plotline from “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, but while reading this book, I constantly thought of it, although I don’t think there are other connections between the two works of literature other than the humorous tone maybe (I have not investigated this further to see whether or not I am right). The mise-en-scene is however done as intelligently as in the above mentioned Shakespearian comedy. I enjoyed reading this book, every bit of it is really well-written and even though the ending is too conventional for my taste and maybe a bit too abrupt, it doesn’t manage to spoil the quality of what happened within the novel.
There are many characters (I literally took notes on the first two chapters or three of the book so as to make sure that I could keep up with the abundance of characters that Murdoch was introducing me to) and there are, of course, far-fetched happenings that they are involved in (this time magic). Relationships are dissected, psyches are explored, the story is a bit eccentric (but this is so typical of Murdoch’s style and again, this does not spoil the experience of reading any of her books), whomever seems good at first proves to be only nice and whomever seems not to fall within the social standards proves to be genuinely good. Well, I don’t want to add any spoilers to my review, but Murdoch’s conclusions make one think and understand the two concepts (of nice and good) for what they really are.
I ended this book wondering: is being surrounded by genuinely good people desirable or is it preferable being surrounded by nice people? Good people might say truths that are hard to take, while nice people would go to any trouble to avoid the thruth in order for others to think them nice. I, for one, prefer the good people. Which ones do you prefer? Well, the boundaries between the two categories might seem really fuzzy if not explored in depth and Murdoch does an excellent job of delineating them through her story and choice of characters.
One of the quotes I really liked from the book:
If I check the dictionary, nice means pleasing, agreeable, delightful, but also showing tact, care or delicacy. So, being nice is mostly a show-off, it is a way of making the others like you, it is a show one puts up for someone else’s eyes. Good, on the other hand, means morally excellent, righteous, of high quality, therefore an intrinsic quality that one has or does not have. One can be good at heart and not seem particularly nice to others as one might not correspond to what the social boundaries make people accustomed to. "Nice" is a decision, while "good" comes from the heart.
Murdoch illustrates the concepts of “nice” and “good” in a very humorous and witty manner. I don’t remember the exact plotline from “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, but while reading this book, I constantly thought of it, although I don’t think there are other connections between the two works of literature other than the humorous tone maybe (I have not investigated this further to see whether or not I am right). The mise-en-scene is however done as intelligently as in the above mentioned Shakespearian comedy. I enjoyed reading this book, every bit of it is really well-written and even though the ending is too conventional for my taste and maybe a bit too abrupt, it doesn’t manage to spoil the quality of what happened within the novel.
There are many characters (I literally took notes on the first two chapters or three of the book so as to make sure that I could keep up with the abundance of characters that Murdoch was introducing me to) and there are, of course, far-fetched happenings that they are involved in (this time magic). Relationships are dissected, psyches are explored, the story is a bit eccentric (but this is so typical of Murdoch’s style and again, this does not spoil the experience of reading any of her books), whomever seems good at first proves to be only nice and whomever seems not to fall within the social standards proves to be genuinely good. Well, I don’t want to add any spoilers to my review, but Murdoch’s conclusions make one think and understand the two concepts (of nice and good) for what they really are.
I ended this book wondering: is being surrounded by genuinely good people desirable or is it preferable being surrounded by nice people? Good people might say truths that are hard to take, while nice people would go to any trouble to avoid the thruth in order for others to think them nice. I, for one, prefer the good people. Which ones do you prefer? Well, the boundaries between the two categories might seem really fuzzy if not explored in depth and Murdoch does an excellent job of delineating them through her story and choice of characters.
One of the quotes I really liked from the book:
“There are mysterious agencies of the human mind which, like roving gases, travel the world, causing pain and mutilation, without their owners having any full awareness, or even any awareness at all, of the strength and the whereabouts of these exhalations... So it is that we can be terrors to each other, and people in lonely rooms suffer humiliation and even damage because of others in whose consciousness perhaps they scarcely figure at all.”(The enhanced version of this review can be found here: http://elephantsonclouds.blogspot.com...)
July 26, 2024
Sadly, a lot of great books from the late 50’s to late 60’s have been forgotten because their authors are no longer in fashion; this is particularly true of many of the women, who are considered somewhat out-of-touch or fusty. (I would argue that Margaret Drabble’s feminism is timeless and right in step with what’s published now but this review isn’t about her.) This tendency changes occasionally with reissues or film versions but not enough, I think. The film “Iris” with Dame Judi Dench brought a brief revival of interest in Iris Murdoch but it didn’t last. I’ve always like Iris Murdoch’s books because I consider her very Shakespearean with various threads leading to a great, dramatic epiphany for the characters, and particularly with regard to romantic and/or sexual relationships; the partner they enter with is not necessarily who they leave with, and they may overplay their hand and come up empty.
“The Nice and the Good” can be most closely associated with Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in that the characters seem to wander around in confusion and with mixed emotions, all around the axis of the beach home of Kate and Octavian. However, the book actually starts with an inexplicable suicide in Octavian’s office; a manager, who no one seemed to know well, shoots himself and while in the Shakespeare play, no one offed themselves, this thread adds a somewhat tragicomic line to the whole story. There’s no Puck here either, but there is a dramatic event which in effect snaps everyone out of the spell they’ve been under, and they all (hopefully) live happily ever after.
I didn’t give this a “5” because I thought that some of the ending was a little too facile, sort of like Murdoch couldn’t continue with a complicated ruse to make some of the final pairings and resolutions come to an end, as if there was a limit to how many pages she could write but Shakespeare did this as well so I can’t nitpick TOO much! This is an England which doesn’t exist anymore so the characters can seem a bit naïve, and the class-consciousness may have another form now, but I enjoyed the book anyway and hope to continue with Iris Murdoch. (No problem there: the woman was prolific!)
“The Nice and the Good” can be most closely associated with Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in that the characters seem to wander around in confusion and with mixed emotions, all around the axis of the beach home of Kate and Octavian. However, the book actually starts with an inexplicable suicide in Octavian’s office; a manager, who no one seemed to know well, shoots himself and while in the Shakespeare play, no one offed themselves, this thread adds a somewhat tragicomic line to the whole story. There’s no Puck here either, but there is a dramatic event which in effect snaps everyone out of the spell they’ve been under, and they all (hopefully) live happily ever after.
I didn’t give this a “5” because I thought that some of the ending was a little too facile, sort of like Murdoch couldn’t continue with a complicated ruse to make some of the final pairings and resolutions come to an end, as if there was a limit to how many pages she could write but Shakespeare did this as well so I can’t nitpick TOO much! This is an England which doesn’t exist anymore so the characters can seem a bit naïve, and the class-consciousness may have another form now, but I enjoyed the book anyway and hope to continue with Iris Murdoch. (No problem there: the woman was prolific!)
September 29, 2018
(3.5) Iris Murdoch’s eleventh novel starts with a bang: civil servant Joseph Radeechy has shot himself at the office, leaving Octavian Gray and Richard Biranne to deal with the fallout. The incident delays Octavian’s departure for idyllic Dorset, where he and his wife Kate live in community with various hangers-on: Mary Clothier and her son Pierce; Biranne’s ex, Paula, and their twins; and the Grays’ daughter, Barbara, whenever she’s home from her Swiss boarding school. I loved the initial introduction to a household so full of joyful bustle, the witty dialogue of children and servants, and a memorable dog and cat. It’s a hot summer and there are games and jaunts down to the rocky beach and an abandoned graveyard.
Gradually the focus shifts to would-be judge John Ducane, the legal advisor to Octavian’s department. Like the narrator of A Severed Head, he’s just breaking off an affair with a younger woman. He’s decided he’s in love with Kate, with whom he shares an occasional kiss. Octavian knows all about this and finds it amusing – I thought of him and Kate as the Oberon and Titania of their enchanted pastoral world, presiding in lordly yet playful ways over the other mortals’ romantic entanglements. (“Midsummer madness,” John remarks at one point.) Again as in A Severed Head, it seems everyone’s infatuated with everyone else, in different ways and at different times. A distinction is often drawn between loving and being in love – the two do not always coexist.
Ducane helps the department look into Radeechy’s death in hopes of avoiding a public enquiry. It seems the man was involved in some bizarre stuff – witchcraft with prostitutes? – and was being blackmailed for it. However, the city and country divide is stark, and so the investigation never overpowers the more low-key interpersonal intrigues down in Dorset. There are lots of important though secondary characters in this ensemble cast – so many that I struggled to pay attention to all of them (Uncle Theo?). Of these I’ll just give a special mention to Holocaust survivor Willy Kost. Thankfully, there’s a much more positive vision of Judaism here than in A Severed Head or The Italian Girl.
I especially noted and liked the duplicated moments, such as two scenes of women jealously observing other mistresses; the instances of dramatic irony; and the sequences composed mostly of dialogue (e.g., Chapter 40). There’s a gripping scene where three characters are stuck in a sea cave due to a rising tide, and the book ends on what seems to be a sighting of a flying saucer. You also have to love the late lion-and-lamb moment of Montrose the cat and Mingo the dog curling up in a basket together.
I kept looking back to the title and asking myself who is really ‘good’ here and what the real value of being ‘nice’ is. Murdoch pardons Radeechy’s peculiar behavior as “minor evil” at most, while Willy’s experience in Dachau is surely the clearest example of human evil at work.
Meanwhile, there are brief mentions of goodness as a state of mind or a matter of personality:
That last quote is a glimpse into Kate’s thoughts: so unrealistically optimistic you have to wonder whether Murdoch is making fun of her. And yet Kate is one of the most stable and contented characters.
This falls about in the middle of the pack for me in terms of how much I’ve enjoyed Murdoch’s novels. There’s a lot going on, perhaps too much, and the reader’s sympathy is spread thin across so many characters. Still, it’s summery, light-hearted fare that manages to also hint at deeper ethical questions.
(Here’s my ranking of the eight I’ve read so far:
Favorite: The Bell
The Sea, The Sea
A Severed Head
The Nice and the Good
Under the Net
The Black Prince
The Italian Girl
Least favorite: An Accidental Rose)
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Gradually the focus shifts to would-be judge John Ducane, the legal advisor to Octavian’s department. Like the narrator of A Severed Head, he’s just breaking off an affair with a younger woman. He’s decided he’s in love with Kate, with whom he shares an occasional kiss. Octavian knows all about this and finds it amusing – I thought of him and Kate as the Oberon and Titania of their enchanted pastoral world, presiding in lordly yet playful ways over the other mortals’ romantic entanglements. (“Midsummer madness,” John remarks at one point.) Again as in A Severed Head, it seems everyone’s infatuated with everyone else, in different ways and at different times. A distinction is often drawn between loving and being in love – the two do not always coexist.
Ducane helps the department look into Radeechy’s death in hopes of avoiding a public enquiry. It seems the man was involved in some bizarre stuff – witchcraft with prostitutes? – and was being blackmailed for it. However, the city and country divide is stark, and so the investigation never overpowers the more low-key interpersonal intrigues down in Dorset. There are lots of important though secondary characters in this ensemble cast – so many that I struggled to pay attention to all of them (Uncle Theo?). Of these I’ll just give a special mention to Holocaust survivor Willy Kost. Thankfully, there’s a much more positive vision of Judaism here than in A Severed Head or The Italian Girl.
I especially noted and liked the duplicated moments, such as two scenes of women jealously observing other mistresses; the instances of dramatic irony; and the sequences composed mostly of dialogue (e.g., Chapter 40). There’s a gripping scene where three characters are stuck in a sea cave due to a rising tide, and the book ends on what seems to be a sighting of a flying saucer. You also have to love the late lion-and-lamb moment of Montrose the cat and Mingo the dog curling up in a basket together.
I kept looking back to the title and asking myself who is really ‘good’ here and what the real value of being ‘nice’ is. Murdoch pardons Radeechy’s peculiar behavior as “minor evil” at most, while Willy’s experience in Dachau is surely the clearest example of human evil at work.
“Ducane’s so nice – ” / “He’s so good – ”
“The point is that nothing matters except loving what is good. Not to look at evil but to look at good.”
Meanwhile, there are brief mentions of goodness as a state of mind or a matter of personality:
“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”
“I think being good is just a matter of temperament in the end. Yes, we shall all be so happy and good too. Oh, how utterly marvellous it is to be me!”
That last quote is a glimpse into Kate’s thoughts: so unrealistically optimistic you have to wonder whether Murdoch is making fun of her. And yet Kate is one of the most stable and contented characters.
This falls about in the middle of the pack for me in terms of how much I’ve enjoyed Murdoch’s novels. There’s a lot going on, perhaps too much, and the reader’s sympathy is spread thin across so many characters. Still, it’s summery, light-hearted fare that manages to also hint at deeper ethical questions.
(Here’s my ranking of the eight I’ve read so far:
Favorite: The Bell
The Sea, The Sea
A Severed Head
The Nice and the Good
Under the Net
The Black Prince
The Italian Girl
Least favorite: An Accidental Rose)
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
June 28, 2017
I tend to like novels which butt the classical spiritual world and its mischievous characters against the modern world as this one does. For that reason I knew I'd like The Nice and the Good. I want to call it a novel of manners--it is one of those British novels with a large number of characters gathered at a spacious country house by the sea, though there are sections in London, too. But it's an Iris Murdoch novel so there's lots going on besides social comedy and hanky-panky--there's a suspicious death, for instance, and the Holocaust hangs over the past. As in other novels, she's concerned with the idea of good and how humans attain that quality, here contrasted with the merely nice. The template Murdoch uses for her novel is the Agnolo Bronzini painting "An Allegory with Venus and Cupid," which depicts time and truth, jealousy, pleasure, and deceit, all of which figure prominently in the novel. No doubt because I like a modern setting which blurs into the classical and no doubt because Iris Murdoch, as usual, has written a novel of such generous breadth and intelligence, I think this the best novel I've read so far this year.
June 19, 2015
Is it good to be nice, nice alone, or is it nice to be good?
Come to think of it, our goodness almost at all times is an action, more so a reaction. It is for a purpose, it expects, it judges, it is hardly forthcoming and shies away from forgiveness. How miraculously difficult it is to be good to someone not so good to you and how difficult it is to be so when one is in control. As Murdoch quotes, “The only genuine way to be good is to be good ‘for nothing’ in the midst of a scene where every “natural thing”, including one’s own mind, is subject to chance, that is, to necessity. The good has nothing to do with purpose”.
The protagonists of ‘The Nice and the Good’ are lively, except for the dead Radeechy of course, each managing through their intricate lives to communicate to the reader their plights. The story begins with the enigmatic suicide of Radeechy, a follower of necromancy and magic. This incident drags in John Ducane, a colleague of Radeechy, to investigate and unveil the cause of this suspicious death and to unfold if there is more to it. Octavian the Head of the Department has assigned this to Ducane; Octavian who has herded in his huge place by the sea many friends with broken hearts and broken lives; the same Octavian who willingly and uncomplainingly witnesses the infidelity of his wife Kate with Ducane. So, in the Trescombe cottage, we have the widowed Mary and her adolescent child Pierce who is madly in love with Barbara, the beautiful lass of Kate and Octavian, and there’s the divorced Paula with her twins, Theo, Octavian’s brother and Willy Kost, a sufferer of war, a liver in the past than now. Each one is fused but their eccentricities mark their individualism and beautifully so. It’s a story of their discoveries of their own selves, getting rid of the veils of niceness to discover the real good, the good for them.
John Ducane is a civil servant of high regard, who his friends and companions look up to, for his goodness, for his righteousness, his truthfulness. He unconsciously likes to be in control or rather people who know him place the reigns of their decisions and emotions in his trustworthy hands. As Ducane’s investigation progresses parallel to the not so eventful happenings at the Trescombe cottage, the lives of the sundry are strewn threadbare by their intimate confessions to Ducane. Dark secrets, blackmails and a murder are revealed. How much of it can Ducane make visible to others, how much is he ready to? Richard Biranne, Paula’s divorced husband lies at the mercy of Ducane’s decisiveness.
How difficult it is to choose right over comfort, over that little safety that everyone invariably desires to hide into, is something that Ducane will have to struggle with to keep his goodness alive. How easy it is to plunge into revenge, to shatter lives without a second thought when one is in control and how unmanageable is it to surrender oneself to goodness and protect and let go for the larger good, to see something as naïveté and give a second chance. Trapped in a cave by the sea to save Pierce from his unwarranted foolishness and almost thrown at the pangs of death, Ducane’s conscience makes some discoveries. Will Ducane succeed in sustaining his rightfulness?
To not realize love can well be termed as the ignorance of the mind than the heart but to suppress it is a crime. The characters in this story, and quite a few at that, ruefully and in some cases compromisingly bind themselves to what they think are the obvious loves of their lives; only to chaotically discover ultimately by the melancholic yet loud thundering of the right chords of their hearts that they have been strumming the wrong strings all this time and the symphony of mutuality lies somewhere else, with someone else. While the act of forgiveness is almost a myth in real life, it isn’t in Iris Murdoch’s story as at the very end everything and everyone falls in place and is on the verge of leading their ‘and they lived happily’ lives. Wish this resembled vividly to us puppets in real life too as we strain to comprehend our mere existence and the glories in the pain that we undergo to find true love and then sustain it.
The author writes in a simple manner and yet it has an enchanting effect. Not for a single instance, did I feel weary of any of the characters and their endless confusing emotions. The multitude of characters reminded me though of David Lodge’s ‘Small World’, since, like here, his stories also end in ‘All’s well, that ends well’, amidst a lot of confusion though!
A few days back, out of the blue, I saw a thick rainbow in the sky. Literally out of the blue! It was drizzling and the sky was a messy gray and then suddenly as I chanced to look out of the unclear glass window, a clearing blue appeared and then there it was, emanating from a tall concrete rise, this amative merging blue, cushioned between the consummating violet, indigo and the other colors of the palette that concluded it. It reminded me of being in love, of a soothing gentleness, of happiness. That’s the goodness of nature. It surprises and amazes. Without a reason, without a purpose!
Come to think of it, our goodness almost at all times is an action, more so a reaction. It is for a purpose, it expects, it judges, it is hardly forthcoming and shies away from forgiveness. How miraculously difficult it is to be good to someone not so good to you and how difficult it is to be so when one is in control. As Murdoch quotes, “The only genuine way to be good is to be good ‘for nothing’ in the midst of a scene where every “natural thing”, including one’s own mind, is subject to chance, that is, to necessity. The good has nothing to do with purpose”.
The protagonists of ‘The Nice and the Good’ are lively, except for the dead Radeechy of course, each managing through their intricate lives to communicate to the reader their plights. The story begins with the enigmatic suicide of Radeechy, a follower of necromancy and magic. This incident drags in John Ducane, a colleague of Radeechy, to investigate and unveil the cause of this suspicious death and to unfold if there is more to it. Octavian the Head of the Department has assigned this to Ducane; Octavian who has herded in his huge place by the sea many friends with broken hearts and broken lives; the same Octavian who willingly and uncomplainingly witnesses the infidelity of his wife Kate with Ducane. So, in the Trescombe cottage, we have the widowed Mary and her adolescent child Pierce who is madly in love with Barbara, the beautiful lass of Kate and Octavian, and there’s the divorced Paula with her twins, Theo, Octavian’s brother and Willy Kost, a sufferer of war, a liver in the past than now. Each one is fused but their eccentricities mark their individualism and beautifully so. It’s a story of their discoveries of their own selves, getting rid of the veils of niceness to discover the real good, the good for them.
John Ducane is a civil servant of high regard, who his friends and companions look up to, for his goodness, for his righteousness, his truthfulness. He unconsciously likes to be in control or rather people who know him place the reigns of their decisions and emotions in his trustworthy hands. As Ducane’s investigation progresses parallel to the not so eventful happenings at the Trescombe cottage, the lives of the sundry are strewn threadbare by their intimate confessions to Ducane. Dark secrets, blackmails and a murder are revealed. How much of it can Ducane make visible to others, how much is he ready to? Richard Biranne, Paula’s divorced husband lies at the mercy of Ducane’s decisiveness.
How difficult it is to choose right over comfort, over that little safety that everyone invariably desires to hide into, is something that Ducane will have to struggle with to keep his goodness alive. How easy it is to plunge into revenge, to shatter lives without a second thought when one is in control and how unmanageable is it to surrender oneself to goodness and protect and let go for the larger good, to see something as naïveté and give a second chance. Trapped in a cave by the sea to save Pierce from his unwarranted foolishness and almost thrown at the pangs of death, Ducane’s conscience makes some discoveries. Will Ducane succeed in sustaining his rightfulness?
To not realize love can well be termed as the ignorance of the mind than the heart but to suppress it is a crime. The characters in this story, and quite a few at that, ruefully and in some cases compromisingly bind themselves to what they think are the obvious loves of their lives; only to chaotically discover ultimately by the melancholic yet loud thundering of the right chords of their hearts that they have been strumming the wrong strings all this time and the symphony of mutuality lies somewhere else, with someone else. While the act of forgiveness is almost a myth in real life, it isn’t in Iris Murdoch’s story as at the very end everything and everyone falls in place and is on the verge of leading their ‘and they lived happily’ lives. Wish this resembled vividly to us puppets in real life too as we strain to comprehend our mere existence and the glories in the pain that we undergo to find true love and then sustain it.
The author writes in a simple manner and yet it has an enchanting effect. Not for a single instance, did I feel weary of any of the characters and their endless confusing emotions. The multitude of characters reminded me though of David Lodge’s ‘Small World’, since, like here, his stories also end in ‘All’s well, that ends well’, amidst a lot of confusion though!
A few days back, out of the blue, I saw a thick rainbow in the sky. Literally out of the blue! It was drizzling and the sky was a messy gray and then suddenly as I chanced to look out of the unclear glass window, a clearing blue appeared and then there it was, emanating from a tall concrete rise, this amative merging blue, cushioned between the consummating violet, indigo and the other colors of the palette that concluded it. It reminded me of being in love, of a soothing gentleness, of happiness. That’s the goodness of nature. It surprises and amazes. Without a reason, without a purpose!
September 5, 2008
I'm an Iris Murdoch sycophant so there's almost no reason to write a review. The Nice and The Good stands with her best, another novel about the British middle classes in the 70s, this with some political intrigue, mysterious cults, and many affairs. But, like many of her books, it's about loneliness, relationships, and in this case childhood. Iris exquisitely defines each character and relationship, and she loves relationships in transition. She's sometimes described as cold-hearted but I think she's just into the absurdity, the emotional brutality and of course the uncertainty all inherent to love affairs. This is, as Murdoch books go, on the fun side and at times absurdly hilarious. She is so good!
March 1, 2021
This book was like a romance mystery, wrapped in a philosophical inquiry, masquerading as a whydunnit (since we know from the very start whodunnit). It's ambitious and filled with absurd characters each seemingly coupled with or hoping to couple with an other, but then also kissing or entangled with yet another other. It's an exploration of what it means to be both happy and good and it's an approach only Murdoch would take.
The book begins with a staff member (Radeechy) committing suicide at a government office. While the entire rest of the book consists of unraveling why Radeechy killed himself, the heart of the book is about the insular world of his co-workers and how endlessly entwined and complicated their lives are. The boss owns a large estate where his subordinate's ex-wife now lives and another of his subordinates visits often seeking an open affair of sorts with the boss's wife, while still trying to break things off with his current girlfriend. Mix in some children, some family, and various hangers-on and supporting characters and you can picture the packed clown car at the center of this circus.
Ultimately, the book grapples with the delusions we allow ourselves to believe, especially the ones caused by desire and passion, as well as how frequently deceit multiplies and leads to misery. It asks: What does it mean to love? And while it has a chaotic feel and an almost comically inconsequential plot, the cast of characters is charming, unforgettable, entertaining, and quite complex.
------------------------------------
NEW-TO-ME WORDS & PHRASES
valetudinarian | spirae | purdah | coracle | ha’porth | eidola | couchant | fetlock | limpets
----------------------------------
An Allegory with Venus and Cupid, By Bronzino (this features on many editions of the book's cover, as well as being referred to in the book itself; here's an interesting video analyzing the painting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5DBFCdp6dI)
-----------------------------------
This is Dame Jean Iris Murdoch.
The book begins with a staff member (Radeechy) committing suicide at a government office. While the entire rest of the book consists of unraveling why Radeechy killed himself, the heart of the book is about the insular world of his co-workers and how endlessly entwined and complicated their lives are. The boss owns a large estate where his subordinate's ex-wife now lives and another of his subordinates visits often seeking an open affair of sorts with the boss's wife, while still trying to break things off with his current girlfriend. Mix in some children, some family, and various hangers-on and supporting characters and you can picture the packed clown car at the center of this circus.
Ultimately, the book grapples with the delusions we allow ourselves to believe, especially the ones caused by desire and passion, as well as how frequently deceit multiplies and leads to misery. It asks: What does it mean to love? And while it has a chaotic feel and an almost comically inconsequential plot, the cast of characters is charming, unforgettable, entertaining, and quite complex.
------------------------------------
NEW-TO-ME WORDS & PHRASES
valetudinarian | spirae | purdah | coracle | ha’porth | eidola | couchant | fetlock | limpets
----------------------------------
An Allegory with Venus and Cupid, By Bronzino (this features on many editions of the book's cover, as well as being referred to in the book itself; here's an interesting video analyzing the painting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5DBFCdp6dI)
-----------------------------------
This is Dame Jean Iris Murdoch.
September 29, 2013
I recall reading some Murdoch in my teens and not particularly liking it. I've since thought of her as one of those writers I've tried and rejected, which is really not true at all. Of course I didn't like her at seventeen, I was busy making mixed tapes. So when this filthy, stained copy of The Nice and the Good beckoned to me at the library, I took it home, and now I'm all excited. It was good! Does that mean all her writing is good? Do I have a multitude of good novels left to discover? Is this the beginning of a Murdoch era?
There's a large cast of characters in this novel, and they're all falling in love with each other, having affairs and trying to end them. John Ducane, the main character, is one of those infuriating people who spend all their time mulling over how to be good, instead of just being good. You know, the kind who tries to leave his lover but chickens out because he doesn't want to hurt her poor fragile feelings. So he throws her a mercyfuck and then feels really bad about it. As if your feeling bad somehow makes you a good person, Ducane! It doesn't! Um, yeah, I really hate that kind of condescending reasoning. But Murdoch is so excellent a writer that she makes Ducane more nuanced than that, and in the end I found him fairly sympathetic.
Oh, and she also weaves in a plot about a suicide at the ministry where Ducane works. Turns out the poor guy had been enjoying satanic rituals in the basement involving naked girls and dead pigeons, and now Ducane has to clean up his mess. Yup, dark rites in the midst of all the lovey-dovey and sexy times, and it works really well.
Now, there's a lot more to the book than that, but I'll let others delve into the delicate moral and philosophical dilemmas presented in it. I'm still a little embarrassed over this late discovery, and will go see what to read next.
There's a large cast of characters in this novel, and they're all falling in love with each other, having affairs and trying to end them. John Ducane, the main character, is one of those infuriating people who spend all their time mulling over how to be good, instead of just being good. You know, the kind who tries to leave his lover but chickens out because he doesn't want to hurt her poor fragile feelings. So he throws her a mercyfuck and then feels really bad about it. As if your feeling bad somehow makes you a good person, Ducane! It doesn't! Um, yeah, I really hate that kind of condescending reasoning. But Murdoch is so excellent a writer that she makes Ducane more nuanced than that, and in the end I found him fairly sympathetic.
Oh, and she also weaves in a plot about a suicide at the ministry where Ducane works. Turns out the poor guy had been enjoying satanic rituals in the basement involving naked girls and dead pigeons, and now Ducane has to clean up his mess. Yup, dark rites in the midst of all the lovey-dovey and sexy times, and it works really well.
Now, there's a lot more to the book than that, but I'll let others delve into the delicate moral and philosophical dilemmas presented in it. I'm still a little embarrassed over this late discovery, and will go see what to read next.
May 16, 2020
Very much enjoyed reading this novel. It makes you root for many of the protagonists. I just wished the ending was not so neatly tied up.
November 22, 2013
"A head of department, working quietly in his room in Whitehall on a summer afternoon, is not accustomed to being disturbed by the nearby and indubitable sound of a revolver shot."
The Nice and the Good rewards Attention. And Attention here is not the fixation on story specifics that foretell the action or outome; there is more here than Shakespearean abundance in figures and forms. For Murdoch, and I've said this previously or a good reading of her essays might show, Attention is something like an indispensable concept to art and moral philosophy - instead of the will, central to Murdoch's picture of the moral agent is a loving gaze that pictures the individual accurately, justly and lovingly. Adequate regard might note in this book the theatrical spirit some two characters have in common whom otherwise appear opposites, or that more than the Nice and the Good there is talk of Void. I could suggest that there is more in Pride and Prejudice than pride and prejudice and the parallel would be obvious. So I also quote Charles Taylor with my emphasis in italics: "I cannot pretend to give an account of Iris Murdoch's contribution to moral philosophy, much less sum it up or give some verdict on it. Her contribution is much too rich, and we are much too close to it."
October 30, 2014
"Theo had begun to glimpse the distance which separates the nice from the good, and the vision of this gap had terrified his soul".
Here, on the second page from the end, is the sentence which really sums up the whole book. Throughout, we see characters trying to be good yet feeling unfulfilled, and characters trying to be 'nice' and failing to be good. Set against the backdrop of a Whitehall thriller, mixed in with murder and the occult, you have 'The Nice and the Good'.
The message is not perhaps particularly inflammatory, yet what Iris Murdoch does is to highlight a group of people and explore how each individual struggles with the conundrum of being 'nice' or 'good'. Some choose to be simply 'nice' - entertaining, pleasant company but ultimately shallow and self-centered - while others attempt to be 'good'. Often they fail, and suffer in the attempt, but they come across ultimately as much more sympathetic.
All the characters, moreover, are fully-formed and believable people. Even the dog and the cat have distinct personalities.
I would definitely read this book again and recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading. It is not too hard a read, nor is it swamped by its message, but it remains with you long after the last page.
Here, on the second page from the end, is the sentence which really sums up the whole book. Throughout, we see characters trying to be good yet feeling unfulfilled, and characters trying to be 'nice' and failing to be good. Set against the backdrop of a Whitehall thriller, mixed in with murder and the occult, you have 'The Nice and the Good'.
The message is not perhaps particularly inflammatory, yet what Iris Murdoch does is to highlight a group of people and explore how each individual struggles with the conundrum of being 'nice' or 'good'. Some choose to be simply 'nice' - entertaining, pleasant company but ultimately shallow and self-centered - while others attempt to be 'good'. Often they fail, and suffer in the attempt, but they come across ultimately as much more sympathetic.
All the characters, moreover, are fully-formed and believable people. Even the dog and the cat have distinct personalities.
I would definitely read this book again and recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading. It is not too hard a read, nor is it swamped by its message, but it remains with you long after the last page.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 8, 2020
Excellent characters and plot. This is the best of Murdoch’s character studies so far. John Ducane is an excellent character and I want more of his story. Murdoch’s genius is spellbinding.
March 21, 2022
Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman led me back to those women’s own writings, especially to Philippa Foot’s virtue ethics. Pip herself is believed to have inspired a character in this novel by her best friend Iris Murdoch, so I had to read it. Set in Dorset and Westminster, we have a delightful menage by the sea overseen by Kate and her husband Octavian, who is a senior civil servant (though clearly with private means). Their household includes Paula, a divorced mother of delightful nine-year-old twins, Mary, a widow whose sixteen-year-old son is suffering an acute case of teen-aged love for Kate’s daughter Barbara, on hols from her Swiss boarding school. A member of his staff with the unprepossessing name of Radeechy had the mauvais gout to blow out his brains at his desk, which led to our principal character John Ducane being seconded to clean up, so-to-speak. Ducane is a lawyer who does not practice and an amateur scholar of ancient Roman, involved in a relationship with Kate that seems somewhere betwixt a flirt and an affair, complicated by another attachment with someone between a lover and an ex named Jessica Bird. (Murdoch’s characters often have frivolous names – I still recall Georgie Hand from A Severed Head.). Kate’s involvement with Ducane is not so sleezy – she tells Octavian everything when they’re in bed together – but John’s is messy; he’s not quite got round telling Jessica and Kate about each other. Readers of Murdoch often remark on her portraying minor characters in much more detail than the plot requires, a Dickensian touch that her admirers enjoy and I find tedious. In the end we have kaleidoscopic rearrangement of the relationships reminiscent of Shakespeare’s late romances. I wondered if the character of Paula’s ex was based in Michael Foot (he’s also a former war-time commando). Though the denouement is typical of comic romance, the story is essentially a conte philosophique, as the title suggests. Ducane begins as basically a well-intentioned but somewhat fastidious person whose lack of complete integrity leads to complicated and compromising situations. It also makes him both metaphorically and literally to descend to the underworld twice: first with a blackmailer and again with Pierce, the latter katabasis a symbol of ritual rebirth and cleansing. Morally the book is excellent, though artistically a trifle too elaborate for my taste.
June 20, 2024
Una siempre contar con Murdoch
January 14, 2022
did it again … asked my class to “consider a post-colonial reading of the text”
July 31, 2022
3.5/5
This is one of the smartest dumb books or one of the dumbest smart books I've ever read: one of the two. Part of reasoning is that this is my third read by Murdoch, so this latest instinctive experience came equipped with the patina of preterknowledge (you know preternatural? extend the definition a tad) of her faults, her foibles, her fancies, and her phantasmagoria. Part of it is the latest update in my near lifelong negotiations with that spectre known as suicidal ideation: you can't think your way out of it (trust me, two decades is a long enough test period on that one), so sometimes you have to hit the centers of habitus where it hurts, or pleasures, or whatever builds on the grain to the point that you no longer simply consider it reasonable, you simply trust it in it because it is either that or the void. So, while Murdoch has a laughable time when it comes to writing women in this one (although I didn't mind so much her focus on breasts, my inclinations being what they are) and her tropes are some of the cheapest things ever spat out by both B-movie horror shows and bubonically phallic award winners, she doesn't abuse either past their expiration point, making for a piece of writing that ties up way too neatly but sensationalizes enough in the blissfully familiar sort of sense that, while a tenth of a brain rails against the insipidity of it all, the other nine-tenths is more than happy to let cathartically drunk dogs lie. Sex, violence, death-defying adventure, and some Sunday morning philosophy to allow the reader some self-satisfaction: add a dash of legitimate otherworldliness on that, and what's not to let slide?
So there's this obscenely loaded couple who has a habit of adopting disenfranchised waifs with a varying number of offspring tagging behind, resulting in what the white toast patriarch labels a "harem" (queering the entire enterprise due to the not insignificant presence of at least one dude, I'll tell you that much) and the sort of incipient overeducated orgy that is usually confined solely to the realm of of repressed universities and isolated boarding schools. Couple that with a suicide of the sort of white dude who'd rather resort to "black magic" than break out of his sexuality straightjacket and various other side effects of a society soaked to the skills in cishet misogyny of the Anglo "Caucasian" variety, and you have enough mystery to keep one in suspense, enough dramatics to spontaneously entertain, and enough half-worthwhile trends of thoughts to keep one from thinking too much about the asking-for-it stupidity of this artificial "keep a stiff upper lip" hell on earth. So, what with all that, why the actual fuck did I enjoy myself so much? Like I said, all brain and no groin can only take you so far, and sometimes you have to draw in the intellectual tendrils a tad and think about the erotic abyss of everyday matters and the opportunities one seizes as a result because, let's face it. It's deathly boring at the top, and when it's an English society that's been left up there to slowly eat itself alive, sometimes the only thing that prevents hoards from throwing themselves off of the Albion cliffs is the single incident of favorable coincidence and the slightest sprinkling of Higher Thought. Since the cast of characters don't all die out of various stages of alcoholism, they must find something better to eternally cast their lot with, and while I could of used less "man + woman = conjugal bliss" and associated psychic self-mutiliations, it was all credible/cute/soothing enough for me to latch onto during a time in my life that still hasn't quite completely leveled itself out. Will it be your personal breed of enjoyment? The cover for my edition features a cutout of a painting that's a reoccurring motif of the work and that happens to portray full blown incest, so. If that's throwing you off, you'd best be on your way.
While I'm rather relieved that my sojourn with Murdoch has thrown up a third-time's-the-charm something that's significantly (if not phenomenally) more positive than what previous experiences had granted me, so long as that profile picture of hers continues to have it queerly seductive hold on my poor brain, I'm afraid I'll be picking up further unread works of hers whenever they fit into a challenge or two. In light of that, it would be best that I be a tad more active in my choices and see how much they veer into the realms of the strange and the unusual, sexuality or otherwise, for I like my stakes when they aren't confined to what I'm (as far as I know, at any rate) doomed to live out for the rest of my days, and with this work giving up the goods , I wouldn't mind trudging through Murdoch's mildly entertaining soap operas for payoffs that give a pleasurable strain to both the intellect and the suspension of disbelief. Then again, there's hundreds, if not a thousand or so, authors that I still haven't given the time of day that I promised them days to months to years ago, and doing the literary equivalent of integral calculus to determine how much more of my life I'm willing to spend(/waste) on a single individual seems rather egotistic, no? In any case, if you came here because of the (Man) Booker nomination and you're frantically scrabbling behind you for the exit latch to this wild ride of my review, I really don't know if you'd enjoy this or not. It's certainly possible that you would, but in the midst of reading my standards were hardly replicable and in this review my sense was hardly sober, so you may be better off starting your Murdoch journey with something less mundanely throbbing and see whether her cut of writing, just below your English professor's evaluations and just above your newspaper's horoscope, happens to be your particular style of sinfulness and redemption.
This is one of the smartest dumb books or one of the dumbest smart books I've ever read: one of the two. Part of reasoning is that this is my third read by Murdoch, so this latest instinctive experience came equipped with the patina of preterknowledge (you know preternatural? extend the definition a tad) of her faults, her foibles, her fancies, and her phantasmagoria. Part of it is the latest update in my near lifelong negotiations with that spectre known as suicidal ideation: you can't think your way out of it (trust me, two decades is a long enough test period on that one), so sometimes you have to hit the centers of habitus where it hurts, or pleasures, or whatever builds on the grain to the point that you no longer simply consider it reasonable, you simply trust it in it because it is either that or the void. So, while Murdoch has a laughable time when it comes to writing women in this one (although I didn't mind so much her focus on breasts, my inclinations being what they are) and her tropes are some of the cheapest things ever spat out by both B-movie horror shows and bubonically phallic award winners, she doesn't abuse either past their expiration point, making for a piece of writing that ties up way too neatly but sensationalizes enough in the blissfully familiar sort of sense that, while a tenth of a brain rails against the insipidity of it all, the other nine-tenths is more than happy to let cathartically drunk dogs lie. Sex, violence, death-defying adventure, and some Sunday morning philosophy to allow the reader some self-satisfaction: add a dash of legitimate otherworldliness on that, and what's not to let slide?
So there's this obscenely loaded couple who has a habit of adopting disenfranchised waifs with a varying number of offspring tagging behind, resulting in what the white toast patriarch labels a "harem" (queering the entire enterprise due to the not insignificant presence of at least one dude, I'll tell you that much) and the sort of incipient overeducated orgy that is usually confined solely to the realm of of repressed universities and isolated boarding schools. Couple that with a suicide of the sort of white dude who'd rather resort to "black magic" than break out of his sexuality straightjacket and various other side effects of a society soaked to the skills in cishet misogyny of the Anglo "Caucasian" variety, and you have enough mystery to keep one in suspense, enough dramatics to spontaneously entertain, and enough half-worthwhile trends of thoughts to keep one from thinking too much about the asking-for-it stupidity of this artificial "keep a stiff upper lip" hell on earth. So, what with all that, why the actual fuck did I enjoy myself so much? Like I said, all brain and no groin can only take you so far, and sometimes you have to draw in the intellectual tendrils a tad and think about the erotic abyss of everyday matters and the opportunities one seizes as a result because, let's face it. It's deathly boring at the top, and when it's an English society that's been left up there to slowly eat itself alive, sometimes the only thing that prevents hoards from throwing themselves off of the Albion cliffs is the single incident of favorable coincidence and the slightest sprinkling of Higher Thought. Since the cast of characters don't all die out of various stages of alcoholism, they must find something better to eternally cast their lot with, and while I could of used less "man + woman = conjugal bliss" and associated psychic self-mutiliations, it was all credible/cute/soothing enough for me to latch onto during a time in my life that still hasn't quite completely leveled itself out. Will it be your personal breed of enjoyment? The cover for my edition features a cutout of a painting that's a reoccurring motif of the work and that happens to portray full blown incest, so. If that's throwing you off, you'd best be on your way.
While I'm rather relieved that my sojourn with Murdoch has thrown up a third-time's-the-charm something that's significantly (if not phenomenally) more positive than what previous experiences had granted me, so long as that profile picture of hers continues to have it queerly seductive hold on my poor brain, I'm afraid I'll be picking up further unread works of hers whenever they fit into a challenge or two. In light of that, it would be best that I be a tad more active in my choices and see how much they veer into the realms of the strange and the unusual, sexuality or otherwise, for I like my stakes when they aren't confined to what I'm (as far as I know, at any rate) doomed to live out for the rest of my days, and with this work giving up the goods , I wouldn't mind trudging through Murdoch's mildly entertaining soap operas for payoffs that give a pleasurable strain to both the intellect and the suspension of disbelief. Then again, there's hundreds, if not a thousand or so, authors that I still haven't given the time of day that I promised them days to months to years ago, and doing the literary equivalent of integral calculus to determine how much more of my life I'm willing to spend(/waste) on a single individual seems rather egotistic, no? In any case, if you came here because of the (Man) Booker nomination and you're frantically scrabbling behind you for the exit latch to this wild ride of my review, I really don't know if you'd enjoy this or not. It's certainly possible that you would, but in the midst of reading my standards were hardly replicable and in this review my sense was hardly sober, so you may be better off starting your Murdoch journey with something less mundanely throbbing and see whether her cut of writing, just below your English professor's evaluations and just above your newspaper's horoscope, happens to be your particular style of sinfulness and redemption.
August 24, 2020
A lifestyle from a different age, although not so very long ago, and people are still people. The reader is conscious of the difference in speed, but that might just be the setting of a sleepy summer for most of the book. There was a feel of middle aged people suffering teenage angst along with the youngsters, and I felt it had a very different ending from the endings you might expect from 21st century novels with similar plots.
November 26, 2021
Weird book. I feel like there was a philosophical point being made but I don't know what it was. Still enjoyed it for the idiosyncratic characters and their "muddled" relationships.
May 23, 2024
Incredible ensemble cast filled with amazingly developed characters. All are completely consumed in their own world but so beautifully intertwined in a really unique and romantic state of domesticity. I do wish the philosophical focus of the novel wasn’t on Ducane. I would have preferred it be Willy or Pierce maybe, I think Kate also has important moments. The moral considerations that arise through other characters are far more interesting to me than the question, “is the law emblematic of the good,” which Ducane faces in his professional life. Other characters explore how and why we treat those we love the way we do, and struggle with very deep and burdensome guilt, which to me felt like the compelling themes of the novel and were sadly under explored. Overall I really enjoyed this, I just wish we got less Ducane and more everyone else.
And of course Murdoch is a sensational writer!
And of course Murdoch is a sensational writer!
March 29, 2019
A review of the insidious and pervasive nature of corruption, with a little bit of redemptive love. The prose is naturally rhythmic, the vocabulary rich, and the descriptions evocative; but I found the characters universally unlikeable, which undermined the theme's impact.
September 12, 2023
A year after the publication of ‘The Nice and The Good’, Iris Murdoch published an essay titled: “On God and Good”. In the essay, she posed questions such as: “What is a good man like? How can we be good? How can we make ourselves morally better?” However, as Wittgenstein stated: “it is impossible to say anything as a philosopher about the concept of “good” or “ethics”.
In this book Murdoch attempts to “show” us the concept of the good by drawing comparisons between the nice, the bad, and the good. She achieves this through the character of John Ducane, a middle aged man who is having a platonic affair with Kate, the wife of his boss, Octavian. Surprisingly it’s not secret, as Kate openly shares everything with her husband.
Ducane is also trying to break up with Jessica, an art teacher and artist who is still deeply in love with him. Ducane is burdened by his shame as he keeps these affairs secret from both women, a fact he is later blackmailed with in the second half of the novel.
In addition to this complex personal problem, Ducane is ordered to investigate the suicide of Radeechy, which leads to even more moral quandaries when he discovers that a colleague he dislikes is connected to the case. Furthermore, the people around him consider him a good man and ask for his to intervention in the problems of almost all the people living in Trescombe, the beach house of Octavian and Kate.
The novel captures the essence of the late sixties, with a strong emphasis on the free love vibe of the era. I was only ten years old when this book came out and living in a small village in Belgium, so I don’t have any concrete memories of the roaring sixties. But I found this to be a captivating and informative read.
PS.
It’s been a long time since I had to look up some words in the dictionary:
valetudinarian: Hypochondriac, comes from valēre, a Latin word that means "to have strength" or "to be well. A valetudinarian might actually be sick, as one definition of the word is “a person suffering from poor health”.
Rebarbatively: in a way that is unpleasant and unattractive.
In this book Murdoch attempts to “show” us the concept of the good by drawing comparisons between the nice, the bad, and the good. She achieves this through the character of John Ducane, a middle aged man who is having a platonic affair with Kate, the wife of his boss, Octavian. Surprisingly it’s not secret, as Kate openly shares everything with her husband.
Ducane is also trying to break up with Jessica, an art teacher and artist who is still deeply in love with him. Ducane is burdened by his shame as he keeps these affairs secret from both women, a fact he is later blackmailed with in the second half of the novel.
In addition to this complex personal problem, Ducane is ordered to investigate the suicide of Radeechy, which leads to even more moral quandaries when he discovers that a colleague he dislikes is connected to the case. Furthermore, the people around him consider him a good man and ask for his to intervention in the problems of almost all the people living in Trescombe, the beach house of Octavian and Kate.
The novel captures the essence of the late sixties, with a strong emphasis on the free love vibe of the era. I was only ten years old when this book came out and living in a small village in Belgium, so I don’t have any concrete memories of the roaring sixties. But I found this to be a captivating and informative read.
PS.
It’s been a long time since I had to look up some words in the dictionary:
valetudinarian: Hypochondriac, comes from valēre, a Latin word that means "to have strength" or "to be well. A valetudinarian might actually be sick, as one definition of the word is “a person suffering from poor health”.
Rebarbatively: in a way that is unpleasant and unattractive.
September 27, 2018
4.5 stars
The opening of The Nice and the Good was such a surprise starting out, as it does, like a golden age crime novel with a death and lots of exclamatory phrases while the incident is treated as a bit of a bore because it gets in the way of weekend plans. Gradually as the novel progresses, the investigation into the death becomes complex and dark and provides existential angst for John Ducane, the unofficial investigator, as he ponders the nature of being nice and good, craving a simple, good life at the same time as he explores his capacity to be ‘brutal’. He craves soft and happy women but gets entangled by women he compares to snakes, demons and witches on several occasions and it isn’t only women he calls demonic; Biranne, Eric, Pierce, all are demons at one point or the other. John is the one everyone turns to for help and advice, the one everyone believes is good as well as the potential savor who is put on a pedestal that he has created for himself, yet the novel follows his struggle with this.
Alongside the investigatory part of the book is a typical Iris Murdoch large country home, inhabited this time by a ‘harem’ of women and their children, a gay Uncle, occasional visitors and, in a cottage on the grounds, a refugee from Dachau concentration camp. There are beautiful descriptions of forgotten graveyards and the ocean but once again, all of the characters have their quirks and secrets. The precociously intelligent twins, the brooding Paula and lovelorn Pierce, the restless Mary and secretive Theo. There are slightly incestuous lusts and an inability for anyone to talk about their past, we have divorce, death and affairs yet the country is often contrasted with the ‘nasty’, ‘crazy’ city.
Standing apparently in contrast to everyone else is Kate, the ‘lady of the manor’ who takes on the role that appears apparently in all Iris Murdoch’s novels, of the enchanter, although a relatively benign one. She and Octavian have an absurdly happy life, using those around them as needed and indulging whatever desires pop up.
It isn’t only Kate who has an effect on people, Willy, the Jewish refugee is treated almost as an icon of some sort, people are always touching him or giving him offerings ‘rather in the spirit of those who place saucers of milk outside the lair of a sacred snake.’ He appears to have his own bewitching qualities that spin their own web but ultimately has the same basic desires as everyone else.
This does seem a novel of the sixties, the miniskirts and frosty lips and overt and liberal sexuality as well as the occult and political scandals. It is the women who primarily appear to have agency in this though, not only Kate but Mary with Willy, Barbara with Pierce and McGrath’s wife Judy, another ‘Circe’ like woman. Having said that we have poor Jessica and Paula who are neglected and put upon and feature in some of the most heart rending scenes.
Pain is not confined to just the woman characters however, Willy, suppresses his memories of Dachar concentration camp and his yearnings for Barbara and then of course there is Theo with his own suppressed and inappropriate yearnings. Yet there is humor in the novel, especially with Casie the housekeeper and Theo and the twins as well as some of the sex scenes and the private conversations of Octavian and Kate. There are a range of scoundrels such as McGrath and Fivey, who range from creepy to louche as well as the unstable Eric who is just a specter we see through his letters to Paula.
There are some really beautiful, poignant scenes, Mary visiting her old house, Paula visiting hers and Theo having to deal with a broken winged seagull as well as a heart thumping scene involving caves. There is also much discussion of what is goodness and what is evil and the degrees to which each can manifest from wars to simple lies although I’m still not sure about the ‘gap between the nice and the good.’ This novel really does have a little of everything and when finished, I felt I needed days or weeks in which to really process it. I don’t think I still have but yet again Iris Murdoch has written a novel that challenges and entices, confuses and delights.
Some favorite lines
‘The water surface shadowed and dappled the sand with faint bubbly forms like imperfections in glass.’
‘he now understood enough about the mystery of married couples to know that there is practically nothing with which these extraordinary organisms cannot deal.’
‘The lazy sinister summer evening thickened with dust and petrol fumes and the weariness of homeward-turning human beings drifted over Notting hill like poison gas.’
‘With this ennui, evil comes creeping through the city, the evil of indifference and sleepiness and lack of care. At such a time the long-fought temptation is wearily yielded to, and the long-dreamt-of-crime is with shoulder-shrugging casualness committed at last.’
‘So it is that we can be terrors to each other, and people in lonely rooms suffer humiliation and even damage because of others in whose consciousness perhaps they scarcely figure at all.’
The opening of The Nice and the Good was such a surprise starting out, as it does, like a golden age crime novel with a death and lots of exclamatory phrases while the incident is treated as a bit of a bore because it gets in the way of weekend plans. Gradually as the novel progresses, the investigation into the death becomes complex and dark and provides existential angst for John Ducane, the unofficial investigator, as he ponders the nature of being nice and good, craving a simple, good life at the same time as he explores his capacity to be ‘brutal’. He craves soft and happy women but gets entangled by women he compares to snakes, demons and witches on several occasions and it isn’t only women he calls demonic; Biranne, Eric, Pierce, all are demons at one point or the other. John is the one everyone turns to for help and advice, the one everyone believes is good as well as the potential savor who is put on a pedestal that he has created for himself, yet the novel follows his struggle with this.
Alongside the investigatory part of the book is a typical Iris Murdoch large country home, inhabited this time by a ‘harem’ of women and their children, a gay Uncle, occasional visitors and, in a cottage on the grounds, a refugee from Dachau concentration camp. There are beautiful descriptions of forgotten graveyards and the ocean but once again, all of the characters have their quirks and secrets. The precociously intelligent twins, the brooding Paula and lovelorn Pierce, the restless Mary and secretive Theo. There are slightly incestuous lusts and an inability for anyone to talk about their past, we have divorce, death and affairs yet the country is often contrasted with the ‘nasty’, ‘crazy’ city.
Standing apparently in contrast to everyone else is Kate, the ‘lady of the manor’ who takes on the role that appears apparently in all Iris Murdoch’s novels, of the enchanter, although a relatively benign one. She and Octavian have an absurdly happy life, using those around them as needed and indulging whatever desires pop up.
It isn’t only Kate who has an effect on people, Willy, the Jewish refugee is treated almost as an icon of some sort, people are always touching him or giving him offerings ‘rather in the spirit of those who place saucers of milk outside the lair of a sacred snake.’ He appears to have his own bewitching qualities that spin their own web but ultimately has the same basic desires as everyone else.
This does seem a novel of the sixties, the miniskirts and frosty lips and overt and liberal sexuality as well as the occult and political scandals. It is the women who primarily appear to have agency in this though, not only Kate but Mary with Willy, Barbara with Pierce and McGrath’s wife Judy, another ‘Circe’ like woman. Having said that we have poor Jessica and Paula who are neglected and put upon and feature in some of the most heart rending scenes.
Pain is not confined to just the woman characters however, Willy, suppresses his memories of Dachar concentration camp and his yearnings for Barbara and then of course there is Theo with his own suppressed and inappropriate yearnings. Yet there is humor in the novel, especially with Casie the housekeeper and Theo and the twins as well as some of the sex scenes and the private conversations of Octavian and Kate. There are a range of scoundrels such as McGrath and Fivey, who range from creepy to louche as well as the unstable Eric who is just a specter we see through his letters to Paula.
There are some really beautiful, poignant scenes, Mary visiting her old house, Paula visiting hers and Theo having to deal with a broken winged seagull as well as a heart thumping scene involving caves. There is also much discussion of what is goodness and what is evil and the degrees to which each can manifest from wars to simple lies although I’m still not sure about the ‘gap between the nice and the good.’ This novel really does have a little of everything and when finished, I felt I needed days or weeks in which to really process it. I don’t think I still have but yet again Iris Murdoch has written a novel that challenges and entices, confuses and delights.
Some favorite lines
‘The water surface shadowed and dappled the sand with faint bubbly forms like imperfections in glass.’
‘he now understood enough about the mystery of married couples to know that there is practically nothing with which these extraordinary organisms cannot deal.’
‘The lazy sinister summer evening thickened with dust and petrol fumes and the weariness of homeward-turning human beings drifted over Notting hill like poison gas.’
‘With this ennui, evil comes creeping through the city, the evil of indifference and sleepiness and lack of care. At such a time the long-fought temptation is wearily yielded to, and the long-dreamt-of-crime is with shoulder-shrugging casualness committed at last.’
‘So it is that we can be terrors to each other, and people in lonely rooms suffer humiliation and even damage because of others in whose consciousness perhaps they scarcely figure at all.’
March 22, 2024
clumsy compared to the bell but absorbing
September 13, 2022
Hace ya unos meses desde que leí este libro de Iris Murdoch y desde entonces no ha dejado de venir ocasionalmente a mi cabeza. Es lo que suele ocurrir con las buenas historias, rara vez se olvidan, pasando a a formar parte de ese imaginario de recuerdos que se creen haber experimentado y que, sin embargo, realmente hemos vivido desde algún otro lugar de nuestro ser.
Lo que más inolvidables hacen a estos libros es su trama construida alrededor de unos personajes tan reales y particulares que pasan a acomparte durante el tiempo que dura la lectura, volviendo más tarde a tu memoria como ese amigo o conocido cercano que conociste en algún momento, en cualquier lugar y vuelve a cobrar presencia con el júbilo del pasado.
Es lo que ocurre con esta novela de intriga tipo thriller, que comienza con la investigación del suicidio de un alto funcionario del Gobierno, que se mezcla con un curioso fresco de relaciones humanas que se dan entre el extravagante matrimonio de Kate y Octavian y todos los personajes que visitan su casa de Dorset, y alrededor de las cuales su autora reflexiona sobre el amor y la amistad. ¿Es necesario mirar a los ojos de la muerte para atraverse a proclamar amor donde antes solo se creía amistad?
Quizá sea desconocida la faceta de Iris Murdoch como filósofa, pero esta no deja de apreciarse en toda su obra de ficción donde trató de plasmar temas como el conflicto entre el bien y el mal, la moral, las pasiones humanas o la muerte, creando unas historias repletas de realismo y de sentimiento, porque antetodo, esta escritora irlandesa consideraba la buena literatura como una actividad platónica.
Lo que más inolvidables hacen a estos libros es su trama construida alrededor de unos personajes tan reales y particulares que pasan a acomparte durante el tiempo que dura la lectura, volviendo más tarde a tu memoria como ese amigo o conocido cercano que conociste en algún momento, en cualquier lugar y vuelve a cobrar presencia con el júbilo del pasado.
Es lo que ocurre con esta novela de intriga tipo thriller, que comienza con la investigación del suicidio de un alto funcionario del Gobierno, que se mezcla con un curioso fresco de relaciones humanas que se dan entre el extravagante matrimonio de Kate y Octavian y todos los personajes que visitan su casa de Dorset, y alrededor de las cuales su autora reflexiona sobre el amor y la amistad. ¿Es necesario mirar a los ojos de la muerte para atraverse a proclamar amor donde antes solo se creía amistad?
Quizá sea desconocida la faceta de Iris Murdoch como filósofa, pero esta no deja de apreciarse en toda su obra de ficción donde trató de plasmar temas como el conflicto entre el bien y el mal, la moral, las pasiones humanas o la muerte, creando unas historias repletas de realismo y de sentimiento, porque antetodo, esta escritora irlandesa consideraba la buena literatura como una actividad platónica.
April 3, 2016
This had all the classic Murdochian elements ... a cast of thousands introduced in opening pages, civil servants, people rich enought to have actual servants, teenagers naked swimming, the sea, bizarre deaths, a European intellectual, everyone being good/not being good/not knowing whether they ought to be good/not knowing whether they are being good/not knowing what good means ... but I didn't feel it was to her usual standard. Not half as enjoyable as A Fairly Honourable Defeat.
Favourite line:
"The room smelt of summer dust and roses."
Favourite line:
"The room smelt of summer dust and roses."
May 5, 2010
With a too-heavy prose-to-dialogue ratio and characters who just can't be liked, this book ultimately fails to deliver the promised meditations on the difference between being nice and being good- it seems none of the people in this book can bother to be either or to be particularly interesting amidst this failure.
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