Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.

The Red and the Green by Iris Murdoch

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In general, you can lump Iris Murdoch novels into three categories. One, a trickster or devil figure plays with others’ emotions in horrifying ways for various amusements: the novels that I’ve read in this category are The Black Prince, The Sea, the Sea, A Fairly Honourable Defeat, Under the Net. Another category involves her creating a messianic or influential “enchanter” figure generally based on her relationship with Elias Canetti — whether she’s writing earnestly or ironically: The Philosopher’s Apprentice, Flight from the Enchanter, A Message […]

Funny when you have to remind yourself about things that, not long ago, consumed your every thought.

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Brass – 3/5 Stars So on the one hand this book falls a little into the generic kind of circa 1990s second generation immigrant American novel that was big for a good while. I recently read Charming Billy by Alice McDermott, which does this very thing. And then on the other hand, this book is a solidly written novel. Or rather, it is a novel, but it a challenging kind of narrative. For one, the story is good and interesting, but also a little typical […]

I am the narrator: a discreet and self-effacing narrator. This book is not about me. I knew, though not in most cases at all well, a number of the dramatis personae and I lived (and live) in the town where the events hereinafter recounted took place. For purposes of convenience, for instance so that my ‘characters’ may be able (very occasionally) to refer to me or address me, I shall call myself ‘N’.

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I tend to really like Iris Murdoch novels, and though I sometimes worry about how similar several of her novels are to one another, I still move forward. The set up of this novel immediately began to prickle that sense of familiarity. There’s a youngish set of potential ingenue type characters and there’s an older and revered master of some kind of field and there’s bound to be cris-crossing love triangles and or quadrangles. So going in, I figured, well this one will be similar […]

One should go easy on smashing other people’s lies.

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Iris Murdoch writes strange novels. There’s an element of the grotesque in them that is not quite the same as say a Gothic novel or especially an American novel, but her characters are often quite capable of true horrors and awfulness without the kind of severity and cruelty of a Heathcliff but also not with the kind of detached irony of a parodic or satirical one. On the other hand, characters like Charles Arrowby might just be the most cruelly ironic evil character I can […]

Short novels Final!

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God on the Rocks – 3/5 Stars https://www.amazon.com/God-Rocks-Jane-Gardam/dp/1933372761/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512942968&sr=8-1&keywords=god+on+the+rocks Jane Gardam is most well known in contemporary circles for her novel Old Filth, which is a kind of running joke on “Failed in London, Try Hong Kong” and so that novel has a final moments of the British Empire in closing feel to it. This novel is an earlier one, from 1978, and takes places during the war. It has a 1970s politics feel to it alongside the feel of the time period in which it’s set. […]

Nabokov by way of Evelyn Waugh?

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

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So you know how you were saying you wanted to read soap operas written by philosophers? Ok, but still, you should. She wrote 26 or so novels from 1956-1995. A few years after her last novel, she died of Alzheimer’s, the story of which you can see in the movie Iris.   Iris Murdoch was a trained philosopher who didn’t start writing until her 30s. She is also concerned with some strange ideas and topics in her novels. For example, when you pick up one […]



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