As I was reading A Severed Head I thought it would make a good farce and then I discovered that Iris Murdoch had adapted her book for the stage.

I felt I was looking into a different world and time. There are only a few characters - Martin, who is complacently happy with his mistress Georgie and his wife Antonia, Palmer who is Antonia’s analyst, Palmer’s half-sister, Honor, and Martin’s brother and sister Alexander and Rosemary. Iris Murdoch has made a tightly-structured novel, using Martin as the first-person narrator. Martin is shocked when his wife announces that she wants a divorce because she is deeply in love with Palmer. This sets in motion a sequence of events in which Martin’s weakness and need are clearly evident. Throughout the novel Murdoch uses the weather to indicate Martin’s mental and emotional state - the dense fog that covers the London streets and pervades his mind.

The novel depicts an amazing muddle and chaos ensues as Martin like a man possessed pursues Antonia, trying to keep Georgina at arms length whilst still not wanting to let her go. He is a man in a mid-life crisis behaving like a teenager swept along by his emotions and falling in love at the drop of a hat.

There are some funny episodes as Martin moves his belongings out of his house into a flat and back again but set against that are serious issues such as abortion, marriage, incest and the struggle for power within relationships. Honor is one of the strangest characters. She is a powerful woman, an anthropologist who describes herself as

"a severed head such as primitive tribes and old alchemists used to use anointing it with oil and putting a morsel of gold upon its tongue to make it utter prophecies."

She can wield a Japanese samurai sword like an expert, tossing a napkin in the air she is able to slice it in half as it flutters to the floor. She has a pale sallow face with black gleaming hair, with “something animal-like and repellent in that glistening stare”. On her first appearance at Palmer’s house she appears to Martin like

"some insolent and powerful captain, returning booted and spurred from a field of triumph, the dust of battle yet upon him, confronting the sovereign powers whom he was now ready if need be to bend to his will."

It’s not a novel I’d describe as comfortable reading, but it is entertaining. ( )

It was later that the pain came, a pain unutterably obscure and confused like that induced by some deprivation in childhood. The familiar world of ways and objects within which I had lived for so long received me no more; and our lovely house had put on suddenly the air of a superior antique shop. The things in it no longer cohered together. It was odd that the pain worked first and most immediately through things, as if they had at once become the sad symbols of a loss which in its entirety I could not yet face. (p. 33)

In the first pages of A Severed Head, Martin Lynch-Gibbon is lying in the arms of his mistress, basking both in her beauty and affection, and in the belief that he has both a young attractive lover and a strong marriage. Later that evening his wife Antonia returns home and announces she is leaving him for her psychoanalyst, Palmer. Martin is outraged, while still holding fast to the "correctness" of his own infidelity. He maintains a stiff upper lip with Antonia and Palmer, who seem to delight in his continued friendship. Martin hangs on his much younger mistress, Georgie, expecting her continued adoration without commitment. Then Palmer's half sister, Honor Klein, comes on the scene and Martin finds himself alternately repulsed by and attracted to her. Here is a man completely destroyed and terribly confused.

As in her other novels, Murdoch seems to enjoy giving the arrogant male his comeuppance, and playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse. I found it difficult to like Martin or, for that matter, any of the characters, but enjoyed the way Murdoch tore down Martin's defenses, exposed his arrogance and weakness, and revealed the soft vulnerable center inside. A Severed Head is both painful and fascinating reading. ( )

This was the first Murdoch I've read and will probably also be the last. The blurbs all said this was a comedy of manners, funny, witty, etc. Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't find a man slapping his women around and having them fall in love with him because of it utterly hilarious. It was neither funny nor particularly interesting, unless you find middle-aged Brits acting out a violent drunken precursor to polyamory fascinating.

If you're reading the Penguin edition, you'll notice a description on the cover: "A Novel About the Frightfulness and Ruthlessness of Being in Love." That's certainly true. But one thing I find hard to explain is how Iris Murdoch can take a melodramatic story about a bunch of self-absorbed characters with largely self-created crises and make it so fun and escapist. Her narrative power is such that you're carried along with the emotional current without once thinking of the improbability of the plot. Not as good as The Sea, the Sea but worth a read. ( )

Why do I love Iris Murdoch? So many people tell me they read to visit worlds they could never experience themselves; reading Murdoch is the opposite. The characters are quite ordinary people in fairly ordinary situations, and we get to read pages and pages about their rationalization of their actions, suspicions about others, and all of the other thoughts that would only warrant a paragraph in any other novel. You get to be inside the mind of another person, completely. We end up meeting flawed characters that make silly decisions and that are influenced by others in ways that only an outsider can see as ridiculous. It's enjoyable, and funny, because it's true!

"The Severed Head" is no exception to the Iris Murdoch rule. The characters are well-developed, the plot simple but engaging, and the whole story just plain great. I laughed at the predicaments of the characters, their reactions and thoughts, and many clever lines about a character named Honor. The puns and deeper meaning were great.

I think this is my favourite of the Murdoch novels I have read so far (about 4 or 5 of them). Recommended! ( )