The Sea, The Sea (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
by Iris Murdoch
from Penguin Classics
Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors-some real, some spectral-that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.
Under the Net
by Iris Murdoch
from Penguin (Non-Classics)
Introduction by Kiernan Ryan
Iris Murdoch’s first novel is a gem -- set in a part of London where struggling writers rub shoulders with successful bookies, and film starlets with frantic philosophers. Its hero, Jake Donaghue, is a likable young man who makes a living out of translation work and sponging off his friends. A meeting with Anna, an old flame, leads him into a series of fantastic adventures.
A Severed Head
by Iris Murdoch
from Penguin (Non-Classics)
Martin Lynch-Gibbon is serenely enjoying both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional re-education.
The Black Prince (Penguin Classics)
by Iris Murdoch
from Penguin Classics
Bradley Pearson, an unsuccessful novelist in his late fifties, has finally left his dull office job as an Inspector of Taxes. Bradley hopes to retire to the country, but predatory friends and relations dash his hopes of a peaceful retirement. He is tormented by his melancholic sister, who has decided to come live with him; his ex-wife, who has infuriating hopes of redeeming the past; her delinquent brother, who wants money and emotional confrontations; and Bradley's friend and rival, Arnold Baffin, a younger, deplorably more successful author of commercial fiction. The ever-mounting action includes marital cross-purposes, seduction, suicide, abduction, romantic idylls, murder, and due process of law. Bradley tries to escape from it all but fails, leading to a violent climax and a coda that casts shifting perspectives on all that has preceded.
"Fertile invention is put to the service of an expansive sense of character; and since the book also has Miss Murdoch's usual narrative energy and intellectual weight, it is the best novel she has written in years." (The New York Times Book Review)
The Bell (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
by Iris Murdoch
from Penguin Classics
A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an order of sequestered nuns. A new bell is being installed when suddenly the old bell, a legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. And then things begin to change. Meanwhile the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercises discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved, whatever that may mean. Originally published in 1958, this funny, sad, and moving novel is about religion, sex, and the fight between good and evil.
With an introduction by A. S. Byatt.
The Unicorn
by Iris Murdoch
from Penguin (Non-Classics)
When Marian Taylor takes a post as governess at Gaze Castle, a remote house on a desolate coast, she finds herself confronted with a number of weird mysteries and involved in a drama she only partly understands.
The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (Penguin Books)
by Iris Murdoch
from Penguin (Non-Classics)
Sacred and profane love are related opposites; the one enjoyed renders the other necessary, so that the ever-unsatisfied heart swings constantly to and fro.
The Nice and the Good
by Iris Murdoch
from Penguin (Non-Classics)
This richly peopled novel revolves around a happily married couple, Kate and Octavian, and deals with love in its many aspects. The resonant sub-plot involves murder and black magic as the novel leads us through stress and terror to a joyous conclusion.
The Sandcastle
by Iris Murdoch
from Penguin (Non-Classics)
The quiet life of schoolmaster Bill Mor and his wife Nan is disturbed when a young woman, Rain Carter, arrives at the school to paint the portrait of the headmaster.
A Fairly Honourable Defeat (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
by Iris Murdoch
from Penguin Classics
In a dark comedy of errors, Iris Murdoch portrays the mischief wrought by Julius, a cynical intellectual who decides to demonstrate through a Machiavellian experiment how easily loving couples, caring friends, and devoted siblings can betray their loyalties. As puppet master, Julius artfully plays on the human tendency to embrace drama and intrigue and to prefer the distraction of confrontations to the difficult effort of communicating openly and honestly.
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