The Philosopher's Pupil (1983)

What to say? What to say? I absolutely decline to follow IM's tantalizing paths through philosophical, symbolic, thematic wildernesses in The Philosopher's Pupil. A person could get lost. I do look forward to discussions of this book, my favorite Iris Murdoch, in the biographies that I plan to read. I might even pick up some general criticism.
Told by an observant narrator, N who steps into the story from time to time, the book is set in Ennistown (Get it?), an English village with a restructured circle of standing stones and a very active hot spring. The whole town is crazy for swimming, and this is a very watery book. If people are not swimming at the baths, they are at the ocean or it is raining or about to rain or the rain is just stopping. There are suggestions of baptisms of one kind and another and one rescue from drowning and one death, maybe. Tom, the archetypal Fool, goes underground to find the Source of the springs and returns to the surface a man able to act decisively. And there you have a hint of the complexities that I refuse to follow one step further.
Well. The story revolves around the McCaffrey family: brothers George and Brian, their wives and mother and their half-brother Tom and Brian's son Adam. George is a wild man whose attempted murder (or maybe not) of his wife Stella opens the book; Brian, something of a nonentity, is married to Gabriel, who is fascinated by George. Into this seething mix of relationships returns John Robert Rozanov, the philosopher of the title, who has ruined George's life by ending their teacher-student relationship. Alex, their mother, would like to explore a relationship of her own with John Robert, who had married her college friend to her own great disgust. John Robert rents the Slipper House, a sort of live-in folly on the McCaffrey property, but to Alex's disappointment he plans to install his granddaughter and her companion there rather than live in it himself. The companion, Pearl, is sister - or is it cousin? - to Alex's own companion and servant Ruby and George's mistress, Diane (originally Diamond).
This begins, and only begins, to describe the widening net of characters who twine and intertwine in a mosh of emotions and intellect gone mad. IM must have had so much fun writing this. The plot twists are over the top; I shrieked, "Oh NO, you didn't!" more than once before dissolving in helpless laughter. On the other hand, as always, IM is examining the nature of Good and religion and non-religion, so this has to be a serious work, right? Whatever it is, it will bear rereading and thinking on. I'll do both. ( )

Re-read this book for the first time in a couple of years. The setting is a slightly fantastical one, slightly not of the world we live in – a middle-class community with its own fads and fetishes, where everyone knows everyone else. The plot is excellent, if a little contrived at the end. Murdoch manages to get inside the heads of her characters, male and female, to an incredibly detailed extent, and it's possible to believe in them all, though none of them is "normal". The jarring note is the dialogue, which tends towards an over-analytical pedantic philosophical style, even when no philosophy is being directly discussed. ( )

Een filosoof keert terug naar zijn vroegere woonplaats waar hij grote invloed had op de familie van een van zijn volgelingen, om een man te vinden voor zijn kleindochter.

Bought 30 Dec 1994

Iris Murdoch is at the height of her powers in this wonderful portrait of Ennistone, the spa town that goes a bit mad every now and then. Full of linked characters and families (making it reminiscent of Middlemarch in my opinion) and with the excellent invisible narrator N, this is my favourite IM novel still, I think. I have re-read this one a number of times and remembered it well, wlthough I had events in a slightly different order. ( )

Too dense for a novel. The only Iris Murdoch book I did not wish to finish (contrasting with nine others I read and enjoyed immensely). ( )