The Good Apprentice (1985)

Many many thoughts jumbling around in my head as I finish Iris Murdoch's The Good Apprentice. Not the least of which is that I am beginning to 'get' Iris Murdoch and I can see how this could well turn into awe a few more books down the road. You could make a case that she is writing more or less the same book over and over again, but that isn't it. More like she is examining a few of the most important questions - the nature of good and evil and our variety (and also similarity) of human responses to emergency situations that arise. How we make things up to suit ourselves, create stories and make things fit, how we rationalize our lying, shrug off our cowardice..... Human behavior as IM sees it, is such a complex interweaving of events and character, that it can be examined endlessly. No coincidence that the two most important animal images in this novel are spiders and a mouse. Something so tiny can alter everything. One careless action can change a life irrevocably is the idea from which the story of The Good Apprentice flows. Edward gives a friend a hallucinogenic, and then, thinking the friend is safely asleep, leaves the room (locked) to visit someone. When he returns the friend has jumped out the window and is dead. Family members and friends gather around, but Edward is lost in his grief. He loved his friend deeply and is in a state of shock and paralysis. How is he to go on and have a life? And it is a good question.
As often is the case in a Murdoch book, the relationships between people are labyrinthine, Edward has a stepfather he loves as a father, and a step-brother ditto. His stepfather is having an affair with his aunt who is married to a brilliant psychotherapist..... Edward's accident pushes any number of static situations (the affair being one of them) into motion. Edward receives an invitation to visit Seegard, his real father's home on the coast, up in the fens, hoping that getting to know his real father might lead to his salvation he goes and finds himself in an almost unreal and definitely uncanny environment. As always with Murdoch, there is a tug of war between rationality and the mystical, a tension I happen to believe is a critical part of the human .... geography?..... both our story-making and our ability to act logically matter, make us who and what we are. Self awareness is everything. Edward's brother Stuart is one of the most fascinating characters Murdoch has put forward yet - a man who has decided to detach himself in every possible way from both story-making and logic in an effort to be truly good. Having done this he becomes a kind of palimpsest for everyone to write their own fictions upon, a blank, a threat, frightening and fascinating. It's breathtaking. As always with Murdoch, there are maddening interactions where people talk at complete cross-purposes, not listening, caught up in their own fictions, but of course, that is just how we all are. Murdoch reminds us of this both fiercely and compassionately. ****1/2 ( )

Midge McCaskerville is worried about the time twenty-five-year-old Stuart Cuno, a family friend, is spending with her thirteen-year-old son Meredith. The two spend hours together during the school holidays among London’s galleries, parks and museums. Stuart has sexual feelings for Meredith and she is right to be worried, but Cuno never misbehaves. ( )

So much mansplaining in this one. Hundreds of pages of mansplaining. All that's left for the reader is to resist. A shame about that. ( )

Iris, you let me down on this one. Having read nine of your novels, I've come to expect three elements in perfect balance: strong characterizations, especially of hapless or arrogant male protagonists, moral dilemmas, and a certain "talkiness" in the prose. The Good Apprentice had all these elements, but they were out of balance and failed to deliver an enjoyable reading experience.

Murdoch's protagonist is Edward Baltram, a young man who played a prank that went horribly wrong and resulted in a friend's death (this is not a spoiler; it happens in the first few pages). Edward is fortunate not to be charged with a crime, but he is devastated and knows his life is permanently changed. His family throws a dinner party to help him "get over it," which is mostly a way for Murdoch to introduce a broad cast of characters. We meet his stepfather Harry, Harry's son Stuart, Edward's aunt Midge and uncle Tom, and Ursula, the family physician. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the dinner party fails to lift Edward's spirits. He decides he'll escape to the country and reunite with his biological father Jesse, and Jesse's wife and adult daughters.

Flip ahead about 100 pages, and you'll find Edward settled in Jesse's house, surrounded by quirky relatives and still wandering around morose and confused. And you'll also find Stuart, a religious fanatic, in endless philosophical dialogue with Tom, and Midge thinking way too much about how to shorten a dress and insert a new panel of fabric.

Amazon calls this book, "Funny and compelling, ... at once a supremely sophisticated entertainment and an inquiry into the spiritual crises that afflict the modern world." Sorry, but I found it repetitive and boring. I'm sure Murdoch's symbolism and ideas become clearer by the end of the book, but I just didn't have the patience to struggle through more than 550 pages.

Bought 1990s?

Can't believe I forgot to review this one - it was still on my bedside table, not in my Reviewing Pile!

In this marvellous fable about families, fatherhood and How To Be Good, Murdoch is working at the height of her powers. This is where the Murdoch A Month project really comes into its own, as a re-reading is deepened by our knowledge of the themes and structures she has been playing with in her career up to now. Crucially, in this novel the common themes and interests are woven completely into the plot and characterisation of the book, working to deepen and intensify the myth of place and person rather than being separate elements to pick out. We have a pair of "brothers", Stuart, who is trying to be good on a rather uninvolved and theoretical level, and Edward, who has done something so bad that he fears he will never escape unless he dies. Both need to do something practical in order to redeem themselves, and both do so rather accidentally. Some marvellous set pieces and Murdochian convoluted relationships, but it doesn't seem contrived and is deeply satisfying. One lovely touch, which I might not have noticed without one of the sessions I attended at the IM conference, was the way in which Edward starts to really "see" the landscape around him, picking out birds and plants, whereas at the beginning all he can see is Trees and Water.

One of my favourites. I do love the Later Novels (and I'm looking forward to a book coming out about them at some point in the next couple of years!) ( )