Written in 1987, this is a typical Murdoch work. It is a literary, well-structured, symbolic melodrama that focuses on intellectuals working through their issues, with the arc centered around a particular pivotal event. The strong central characters dominate the narrative, while the development of minor people and relationships enriches the dense story. There is always a drive towards a hoped-for finale, but invariably, after all the action in all her novels, there is a real sense that "well, life goes on".

A group of fifty-somethings from Oxford University meet at a reunion. There is aristocratic Rosie, bossy bi civil servant Gerard, Jewish Jean and her diplomat husband Duncan, rich widow Lily and her young unemployed partner Gulliver, and smarmy gay teacher Jenkin. The group has funded David Crimond, since they were students, to write a book on Marxism. They are joined by family friends such as virginal Tamar, her unsympathetic mother Violet, Gulliver, Conrad, and others. Unexpectedly, David turns up at the party, and Duncan ends up being pushed in the river. Jenkin has always fancied Gerard, Tamar wants the love her mother fails to give, and the group, now clearly not lefties, wonder where the book is going. David is the cause of unrequited love for several of the women. The main dynamic is that early on, we learn that Jean had an affair and would readily leave Duncan (but still loves him really).

This is one of Murdoch's longest novels, so it might not be the best choice as your first Murdoch to try. It did drag a little, but quite a lot happens. I can imagine that if you aren't used to her style, it could all become very tiresome and give the impression of a "read one read them all" scenario. However, actually, her novels are so well written, clever, and slightly surreal that they always end up being a good read. This one is probably one of her best examples.

I will never cease to be astonished by Murdoch's remarkable ability to intricately weave together so many diverse narratives. This book, which spans a hefty 600 pages, is a masterclass in storytelling. I was truly amazed to find not a single loose or unfinished thread.

Moreover, I have never felt more deeply understood by a character than I did by Gerard Hernshaw. Like him, I too am completely smitten with Jenkin. Inevitably, with such a large ensemble cast of characters, I found myself more drawn to some plot lines than others. However, because they all interconnected, at least to some extent, I never once felt burdened by having to "trudge" through what might otherwise have been considered boring scenes.

The discussions of philosophy, religion, and politics were absolutely fascinating. I firmly believe that anyone with even the slightest interest in philosophy or religion should make it a point to read Iris Murdoch. And for those with a particular interest in 20th-century politics, this book is an absolute must-read.

Damn, these characters are just insanely good. For the days that I was engrossed in reading this, I felt as if I was living and breathing them. They all come to life on the page (except for the unfortunate ones who meet their demise... but even they continue to feel vividly alive through the experiences of the survivors, especially the one who succumbs to "the accident." Thank you, Gerard).

Anyways, to anyone who has actually managed to reach the end of this review - READ THIS!!! It's an absolute gem that you won't want to miss.

I truly love Iris Murdoch's writing style.

And indeed, I have really liked "The Book and the Brotherhood."

However, when you are faced with a long and dense novel like this one, you expect a story that is larger than life.

In reality, one must be prepared to discover a rather ordinary story about friendship, the passage of time, and ambitions.

It's very much about the goings-on at home, but also very accurate.

The novel delves into the complex relationships between the characters, showing how friendship can change and evolve over time.

It also explores the different ambitions that people have and how these can sometimes come into conflict.

Despite being a seemingly ordinary story, "The Book and the Brotherhood" is filled with Murdoch's unique insights and beautiful prose, making it a truly engaging read.

The best book I've read all year is truly a remarkable piece of literature. It has taken me on an unforgettable journey through its engaging storyline and well-developed characters. The author's writing style is captivating, making it impossible to put the book down once I started reading.

The plot is filled with twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat, constantly guessing what would happen next. Each chapter introduced new elements and challenges that added depth and complexity to the story. The characters are so vividly portrayed that I felt as if I knew them personally. Their emotions, dreams, and struggles were palpable, making me empathize with them throughout the book.

Overall, this book has had a profound impact on me. It has not only entertained me but also made me think deeply about various aspects of life. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great read. It is definitely a book that will stay with me for a long time.

I was truly and pleasantly surprised by just how incredibly funny this particular thing was.

From the very beginning, it had me in stitches, and I found myself laughing (silently) a great deal.

The humor was so well-crafted and clever that it continuously caught me off guard.

Each joke and witty remark seemed to build upon the last, creating a cumulative effect that had me thoroughly entertained.

I couldn't help but be impressed by the comedic talent on display.

It was one of those rare experiences where I was completely immersed in the hilarity and found myself forgetting about everything else for a while.

Overall, it was a truly enjoyable and memorable encounter with some top-notch humor.

At a midsummer ball held at Oxford, a group of old friends has come together. There is the charming Gerard Hernshaw. Rose Curtland, who has quietly loved Gerard for many years. Duncan Cambus and his restless wife, Jean. Jenking Riderhood, the saintly schoolmaster. Tamar Hernshaw, Gerard's tormented niece. And not least of all, David Crimond, the single-minded Marxist genius. Years ago, these friends united to fund a political and philosophical book to be penned by Crimond. On this summer's evening, Crimond's actions set off a crisis, and by the end of the night, the vengeful ghosts of the past have invaded the present.

I had never read this author before. She is an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels that explore good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. I had, however, read glowing reviews of her work. The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

I can say that she is a highly descriptive writer. She details everything minutely: the scene, what everyone is thinking and feeling, what they are wearing, what their houses are like, the scenery, and so on. As a result, I was almost halfway through the book before I started to enjoy reading it on any level. I assume all that background was necessary for the plot's twists and turns in the second half, but I found it very laborious.

Tamar reminded me a great deal of Deidre in Less Than Angels. She is a gauche and somewhat unattractive young woman, desperate for love and thus developing a crush on the first somewhat available man she meets. Shy, unable to make accurate evaluations of others, having no boundaries and no ability to say no to anyone, especially her dreadful mother (who raised her to be all those things because it made it easier for the mother to manipulate her daughter). It was like watching a train wreck. Although Deidre survived her experiences much more constructively than poor Tamar ever did.

In fact, it was like watching multiple train wrecks simultaneously. People who thought endlessly and obsessively about themselves and their emotions and motives, and about others and their emotions and motives. It was exhausting, and it struck me that this style might be an accurate portrayal of a certain class of English people in the 50s and 60s, but it seemed stilted and unrealistic to me. Did people really silently love someone for years without saying a word? It's hard to believe, at least for me.

A book that I find difficult to classify (some literary critics would say it is unclassifiable), let alone summarize. To give an idea of what it is about, I must ask to be allowed a certain dose of mischief.

Suppose there are at least a dozen characters who are treated with some depth. Imagine their relationships as a representation of arrows, like a matrix or as complex permutations of twelve by twelve. Now, let's write down the result. Well, that's what Murdoch does.

Gerard with Tamar: water. Jean with Crimond: touched and sunk. What a mess!, someone will think. I have thought so too, I must admit it. However, Murdoch manages to keep the brilliant twelve-piece set continuously in the air without it becoming a junkyard. And, moreover, it is interesting, even for someone as little interested as I am in social plots. So someone who enjoys this theme should enjoy it to the fullest.

In summary, against all odds, I liked it.

By the way, a great translation (and no easy task) by Jon Bilbao.

At first, I was really underwhelmed. There were so many silly people in the story, and I just couldn't seem to get into it.

However, as I continued reading, I started to realize that this was actually a very good book. The author, she wrote so well. Her words had a certain charm and elegance that drew me in and made me want to keep reading.

The characters, although silly at times, were also very relatable and endearing. I found myself caring about what happened to them and rooting for them to succeed.

The plot was engaging and full of twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat. I couldn't put the book down until I had finished it.

In conclusion, while I may have started out underwhelmed, I ended up really enjoying this book. It was a great read, and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good story.

Holy shit, I took a year to finish this remarkable piece of work.

It is a wonderful read that delves deep into the intersecting relationships among a group of friends. The book they have commissioned is centered around their binding belief of Marxism.

Just like in "The Sea, the Sea", there are elements of obsession. Here, a man desires to love a woman to such an extreme extent that he wants to own her, control her, and ultimately, it seems, is fated to devour her.

This is a beautiful work that has left me completely enthralled. I simply can't wait to explore more of her books and discover the hidden gems and profound insights that lie within them.

Just as well I've been reading Moby-Dick in the lead-up to starting this book.

Just like Melville, Murdoch loves to list and categorize things. In this case, Murdoch spent the first part of The Book and the Brotherhood listing all the characters, what they were wearing and how they were related or linked.

I had to draw myself a character tree to keep everyone in their rightful place!

It was kinda fun...as we watched a bunch of ageing college friends run around their old campus in a weird, debauched summer-time fling at their lost youth. We quickly realize though that they haven't really evolved emotionally very much from their youthful passions - with lots of whose sleeping with who, she said what? and he looked at me the wrong way kind of shenanigans.

I'm always amazed how Murdoch can create a story full of pretty unlikable characters, yet hold your interest at the same time. I guess it's her ideas and philosophy that intrigue. Maybe Oxbridge really is full of people just like the ones in this book, but it's hard to credit that there could be so many dithering, ineffectual intellectuals running around England, not really doing anything with their lives.

A couple of the men seemed to have some kind of vague government job, and of course, Crimond had his book to write, but everyone else just swanned around doing nothing but overthink, well, everything.

The entire cast of characters were so caught up in themselves that they constantly bounced from one catastrophic emotional drama to the next, inflicting harm on each other at an exhausting rate, with very little self-awareness and barely a public observance of contrition.

It's frustrating to get to the end of this rather huge book, to find one of the characters still saying 'other people are so mysterious'. No-one seems to have worked out anything. They all just keep on fluffing along, drifting in and out of things with very little purpose or decision.

But, perhaps, that's what we all do in the end.

Full response here - http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com/2019/...

I would have awarded this more stars. After all, it is neither better nor worse than most of the other Murdoch books that I have read and adored. However, I think I might be growing a bit tired of her works. This particular one was just overly long. And, as you might have guessed, it once again focuses on a group of idle intellectuals in their thirties or forties, residing in London. Half of them are bisexual and are engaged in sexual relationships with each other. Their convoluted lives revolve around a blazing-eyed, sinister, Svengali-like intellectual who has an inexplicable hold on all the characters, especially the women. I am still attempting to determine if Murdoch intends for us to find this Svengali figure (who appears in various forms in each of her novels and is reportedly based on her long-time lover, Elias Canetti) as appealing as the lovesick women in her books do. If that is the case, then it is rather unfortunate for her. Because if those characters are all modeled after Canetti, then Canetti was a truly despicable person, and Murdoch was rather deranged for expending so much emotional and intellectual energy on him. Now, this kind of discussion about the author's intent and whether one likes the character usually has no place in a serious assessment of a serious book. But in this instance, it has to be addressed since she places this loathsome Canetti/Svengali figure at the core of every book she writes and seems to assume that her readers will understand why people are attracted to him. Here is my query. Murdoch's books aim to grapple with a wide variety of philosophical questions, ranging from epistemology to Marxism, from the Holocaust to morality, and even to God. However, due to her own romantic history and the baggage that she can never quite shed, can it be said that each of her books ultimately boils down to the following perplexing cosmic question: why do lovely and intelligent women continuously fall for jerks? Perhaps so. And perhaps that is the universe's eternal mystery.

"The Book and the Brotherhood" by Iris Murdoch is probably one of the most interesting books I have read in recent years. The author presents to the reader a superb work where she masterfully exposes her narrative strategies. It seems as if the omniscient narrator moves with complete ease and comfort among one character and another, assuming the perspective of each one, advancing and retreating in their thoughts at every moment, as if the very truth were instantaneous and created in the present, in the moment when the book is being written.

It is a book that, taking the concept of Bakhtin, we can distinguish by its polyphonic character. The characters are complex, as in the works of Dostoyevsky that served as the basis for Bakhtin to formulate his famous theory of polyphony. Behind each character we perceive a universe, as if they were alive, thinking and walking beside us. The author deals with numerous human themes such as freedom, death, religion, love, but above all, the search for happiness.

Murdoch shows us a series of characters who time and again are frustrated in their eagerness to find happiness in a world that, by itself, makes it impossible, constantly postpones it, for in this world there is no longer a place for "eternity".