This book took me forever to read.

I just kept waiting and waiting for something within its pages to engage me.

However, that moment of true engagement never actually happened.

I found myself plodding through the text, hoping that at any given moment, there would be a plot twist, an interesting character development, or a profound idea that would capture my attention.

But alas, it seemed as if the book was content to remain平淡无奇.

Perhaps it was the writing style, which failed to draw me in, or maybe the story itself just didn't have enough substance.

Whatever the reason, by the time I finally reached the end, I couldn't help but feel a sense of disappointment.

This was not the captivating read that I had been hoping for.

Harriet is not stupid by any means, but she can be a bit of an imposition at times.

David really needs to stop being so self-centered and get over himself.

Blaise, on the other hand, is extremely arrogant. He claims that when it comes to asking her to sacrifice herself, she is the sacrificing type and that it will probably make her happiest to feel that she has saved him.

I was quite surprised to learn that Catherine the Great disposed of her lovers.

The introducer makes a rather silly mistake by confusing Hamburg with Hanover. It is truly a pity because it would definitely spoil your enjoyment of this excellent novel if you were to read the introduction first.

Overall, these characters and their actions add an interesting layer of complexity to the story, making it a captivating read.

I was really looking forward to starting with Iris Murdoch, but this book has disappointed me a great deal.

2.5
Undoubtedly, it is well-written. However, it has too many pages as the author just keeps repeating the same story over and over again in a loop. It's a soap opera-like love that changes direction on every page.

It feels like the plot lacks real depth and development. Instead of presenting a complex and engaging narrative, it seems to rely on the same formulaic twists and turns.

I had expected more from such a renowned author. Maybe I was just unlucky with this particular book, but it has definitely left me with a sense of dissatisfaction.

I hope that my next encounter with Iris Murdoch's work will be more fulfilling and will showcase the true talent and creativity that she is known for.

I am truly unsure what rating to assign to this book. It is filled to the brim with the agonies of dreadful human experiences and extremely long discussions that looped back in rather nasty manners. The terrible, blunt meaninglessness of fate is also a prominent theme throughout. However, I believe that was precisely the author's intent. Perhaps the book is meant to make us face the harsher aspects of life and the seemingly senseless nature of some events. It forces us to grapple with the raw emotions and the complex web of human interactions and the cruel twists of fate. While it may not be an easy read, it does have the power to make us think deeply and reflect on the nature of our existence and the forces that shape it.

This book delves into the intricate nature of human beings that Iris Murdoch endeavors to fathom and dissect into themes and layers.

It pertains to the unjust, ill-fated struggle against our own distinct "demons" that rend us asunder.

It explores the concept of how the inability to embrace our own nature and selves can cause us to lead lives founded on lies for an extended period. It also examines how the perpetual conflict between the longing for profound connection with others on one hand, and unregulated egos and unresolved pain from the past on the other, compels us to harm those we need the most.

The book arrives at the conclusion that the pain of the past invariably triumphs (although I don't necessarily concur with this), impelling us to perpetrate unimaginably harmful acts on others, leaving us either solitary or, at best, disillusioned.

It also touches upon how depending on others to care for us (and make us happy) can result in a forfeiture of personal freedom and self-respect.

In essence, the book is about the impossibility of segregating sacred and profane love—or even answering the question of which is which. It reveals how eagerly we deceive ourselves merely to maintain our sanity, while those who don't end up oscillating between the pain and shame of the immoral deeds they commit, and the inevitable vanity and narcissism that accompany helping someone.

In this article, we explore the themes and characters in Iris Murdoch's novel. The quotes from the novel add depth and insight.

"In these moments you are not only imposing a false idea of freedom and power on an effervescent emotion, a romantic feeling for me, a weak and confused desire to be helped. Wake up, return to reality. You are very far, perhaps many years away, from a profound change in your life."

This quote, put into the mouth of Monty, one of the central characters, shows a moment of lucidity amidst so much unfaithful love, self-deception to combat loneliness, and obsession with fitting into the perfect family. Monty is addressing Harriet Gavender, who, despite being a perfect and placid wife for years, couldn't prevent her husband from leading a double life and ultimately being abandoned by him. Monty, a successful novelist and neighbor of the Gavenders, is the only one who has always known about this deception and is thus the most objective observer of a family life of pretenses.

The characters in this novel deceive and self-deceive continuously, perhaps as the easiest way to justify certain shortcomings.

"I'm so tired of that该死的Blaise! His needs, his theories, his challenges. Hasn't he already taken enough from us, destroying our lives from top to bottom, so that on top of that we send him to study Medicine while we tighten our belts? What about my needs, for a change? I also have a brain."

This is the third novel I've read by Iris Murdoch, and many of the themes that caught my attention in "The Sea, The Sea" are repeated here. Essentially, it focuses on the search for love, a love that always seems out of time or out of sync, or perhaps a love that serves as an excuse for other deficiencies. Blaise Gavender has been deceiving Harriet, his wife, for years. He lives with her in a cozy house in the countryside with their son David and surrounded by dogs, while also maintaining another family in a much more humble apartment with his mistress Emily and the son they had together, Luca. Here, there is a kind of dichotomy of a man living two parallel lives, apparently tormented by guilt but really charmed by the situation.

In this regard, Iris Murdoch creates a fascinating portrait of a way of life... characters who don't know or can't be alone and yet continuously self-deceive using the word love.

"-I think if Harriet were to find out about Emily, the world would end in a huge explosion.
-Unfortunately for you, that won't happen. You will all continue to exist, sleeping, eating, and going to the toilet."

The characters created by Iris Murdoch here are a delight. Blaise, the charming but obsessed psychotherapist who doesn't have a medical degree, Harriet, the perfect wife and homemaker, their son David, who at sixteen with the appearance of a Viking god seems to live permanently outside of reality, Emily, the mistress who lives in social exile because her profile doesn't conform to what is politically correct, and finally, Luca, the eight-year-old child, the only sane one in a family of hysterics. Luca is a delightful character, the focal point around which Iris Murdoch builds her vision of what she considers humanity in its essential state.

"She was so full of vain regrets. -If only, if only, if only - she thought for the umpteenth time -, I had forced him to leave that cow of a woman back then, nine years ago, when I had him completely crazy, when he was my slave."

This novel sometimes seems like a work of theater, with only two or three settings, the two houses, where characters come and go, meet, love, come into conflict, and, why not, also hate each other to death. There aren't as many characters as in "The Sea, The Sea," but each and every one of them has its importance, its key in the story. Iris Murdoch again tells us many of the events through a certain symbolism, such as dreams, where some characters relate them in great detail, or Greek mythology. In conclusion, it's a novel that I've enjoyed very much because although Iris Murdoch is continuously questioning human behavior, at the same time there are very beautiful scenes that remain engraved.

The translation is by Camilla Batlles.

"Women always want men to break down - said Monty -, so they can build them up again. I'm broken down enough, believe me, without the need for demonstrations. I'm not behaving like a man. If I had a regular job, I would have to do it. Since I'm self-employed, I can spend the day brooding bitterly. Grief is not uncommon. One should treat it as if it were the flu. Even Niobe finally stopped crying and wanted to eat something."

https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2022...

It's been a couple of months since I've added a book to my favorites, but I'm adding this one. Of the half dozen Iris Murdoch novels I've read, The Sea, The Sea has been my favorite, but this one is equally good.

I should say SPOILERS FOLLOW.

This story is about marital infidelity. The betrayer is Blaise, a man. His wife, Harriet, is naïve and loving. She accepts his confession in a letter and continues to love him. She even suggests he spend more time with his mistress and their eight-year-old son. Blaise is happy with this and follows her suggestions, but chaos ensues.

While Blaise is the main character, there are really a half dozen other characters. We get a detailed look at their attitudes, dilemmas, feelings, and thinking. In fact, Blaise is a psychoanalyst.

His wife, Harriet, suffers from an excess of love. She is empowered by the situation and feels a new sense of power. Their 17-year-old son has his own quirks and is surly and uncommunicative. There's also a neighbor, Monty, a famous author, who is mourning the death of his wife. Emily, the mistress, lives in a dumpy apartment and has financial problems. And there are two attractive young women who are rather promiscuous.

There are also hints of homoeroticism in some of the relationships. The author, Iris Murdoch, was bisexual. The story has some plot twists that some critics have called 'bizarre', but I think they add to the realism of the story.

If you choose to read this book, I'll tell you there are two murders, but I won't say who the victims and killers are. It's a great book!

Iris Murdoch was a prolific author who wrote more than 25 novels and some academic philosophy texts. Her novels focus on themes such as good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. The Sea, The Sea won the 1978 Booker Prize, and the book I reviewed won the 1974 Whitbread Award.

SUMMARY -

You'll likely despise most of the individuals in this book. However, by the end, you may find yourself pondering whether the dogs could ever come for you as well. It's a rather captivating story about the lies that all people tell.

This really irked me, yet in a good sense. Murdoch is more Hobbesian and cynical than ever before. To the extent that a canine bloodbath is about as close as we are presented with a happy ending. There are no such comforts in Murdoch's capricious universe. Perhaps a better title could have been 'The Sacred and Profane Hate Machine'.

Where Murdoch excels is in the combination of fast-paced action and moral philosophy that is more implied than explicit. And it's all the more successful for enlisting the reader to take sides. Then, we watch as they squirm when they begin to question their own choices. There is a clear premise involving the two-timer Blaise and his potentially precarious hold on both his wife and mistress. The dialogues on morality are mercifully kept to a minimum (or at least short enough that they don't slow down the story). And we get a more complex and fluid shift in sympathies than is often the case.

Murdoch had missed out on some of the emerging book awards in the twenty years prior to this work, starting from 1954. Remarkably, she had already been nominated three times for the Booker, including in the first year of 1969, and again in 1970 and 1973. Having missed out on any of these (which I think is fair), the award of the Whitbread Prize in 1974 for this novel seems justly deserved. Although 'The Bell' (1958) still remains my favorite thus far, in my opinion, Murdoch's output in the 1970s represented a return to form.

While reading The Sacred and Profane Love Machine, my mind could not help but whisper Zelda Fitzgerald's quote: “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”

Iris Murdoch delves deep into the lives of her characters, painting a vivid picture of a world filled with pain and agony, standing in stark contrast to innocence. Each emotion is closely monitored by the conscience of every individual.

Whether they are children or adults, gullible or cynical, the characters in this story often find themselves making choices between lying or accepting lies in an attempt to maintain an ordinary life.

However, this delicate balance is shattered when the unthinkable occurs, and the war between sacred and profane love commences.

As the story unfolds, we are drawn into the complex web of emotions and relationships, forced to question our own beliefs and values.

Murdoch's masterful storytelling keeps us on the edge of our seats, eager to discover how the characters will navigate this tumultuous journey.

The Sacred and Profane Love Machine is a thought-provoking and deeply moving work that explores the depths of the human heart and the power of love.

The title is derived from Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love, a painting that is notoriously ambiguous. It leaves the viewer wondering which clothed or naked woman represents which type of love.

In the novel, Murdoch further confounds the reader. She repeatedly makes us question whether Harriet and Blaise Gavander’s 19-year marriage or Blaise’s nine-year secret affair with Emily is a sacred connection.

Moreover, before the novel even begins, their neighbor, the crime writer Monty Small, who has colluded with Blaise, has already experienced a tumultuous relationship with his actress wife, Sophie. She may have been unfaithful, and Monty has loved, hated, and been widowed by her. But was his love for her sacred or profane?

These questions add depth and complexity to the story, making the reader constantly reevaluate the nature of love and relationships as presented in the novel.

4.5 stars

“Extreme continuing unhappiness often consoles itself with images of death which may in a sense be idle, but which can play a vital part in consolation and also in the continuance of illusion. If that happens, I am dead, consoles, and also dulls the edge of speculation and even of conscience. It is another way of saying, to me that cannot happen.”

My initial thought upon finishing this was that it is the bleakest and most cynical of all the Murdoch books I've read thus far. Or, to put it differently, it's an accurate portrayal of human behavior. Murdoch's humor isn't absent here, but it definitely doesn't drive this story. This is a brilliant book, intelligent and entertaining. There are glorious descriptions of settings and of nature (including a motley pack of dogs) that delighted me. However, this book is also distressing. I was nearly done with it but postponed reading the last 20 pages until the following day because I needed a moment to come to terms with what had just occurred in the story.

Marriages, love affairs, and domesticity, as is typical with Iris, are the means through which this story is told and through which morality is examined. Relationships are turned upside down, concessions are made and then retracted, people get what they want but then miss what they had and scheme destructively (both intentionally and not). I don't want to spoil anything, but there are winners and losers and who is which might not be as obvious as it first appears. Which love is the sacred and which is the profane?
Most of the loves depicted here are distorted by egoism and fantasy. Some of the characters embody Murdoch's concept of the void (inspired by Simone Weil), one of her ethical modes of being, which is despair or affliction in opposition to transcendence, which is necessary for goodness (morality). Some people attempt to fill the void with lies and fantasy rather than experiencing the reality of pain. Fantasizing makes the world and other people more and more abstract, meaning we can't truly see them. If we can't truly see them, we can't treat them with moral consideration and they become a means to an end, the end being the fulfillment of fantasy and the maintenance of lies. It's all wrong, but people live entire lives this way. Entire relationships (like those in this book), some lasting for years and years, are lived in this manner. As Iris noted in one of her philosophy books, “being in love, the insanity of it.”
“It might be perfectly true that there was no deep sense in things, that nothing and no one had real dignity and real deserving, that ‘the world’ was just a jumble and a rubble and a dream, but was it not supreme cheating to make this senselessness seem to be the very essence of one’s being? He might be a very shoddy artist, but he had the artist’s capacity to cheat. Better surely to live as ordinary clever people live, by wit and pain and sex, finding these at last in the pinnacle of one’s spirit. Better to resort to the holiness of suffering and to consent to give some name (‘love’ for instance) to the ground of one’s being, rather than to attempt this radical undoing of natural essence.”

The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

The Sacred and Profane Love Machine is a captivating exploration of the absurdly tragic and the tragically absurd. It serves as a scathing send-up of the ridiculous cycles that people often find themselves caught in. This dark satire is rich with social commentary and sober reflection, revealing the bleakness of life while humorously skewering marriage, affairs, and human connection. It truly is Vintage Murdoch at its finest.

Blaise Gavender, a psychoanalyst, seems to have it all. He has a loving wife, a teenage son, and a beautiful house in the country. However, he also has a mistress in London and has been living a double life for years. Tormented by his lies, he is unable to envision a life without either woman. The Gavenders' neighbor, Montague Small, is a bestselling author of a detective series he despises and a new widower who is emotionally adrift. Over the course of the novel, the lives of these three households become irrevocably intertwined, with love, lust, and chaos running amok.

The setup and character introductions in The Sacred and Profane Love Machine are masterful, a hallmark of Murdoch's writing. The dreams that everyone has the night before the story begins are vividly recounted, adding an element of mystery and foreshadowing. Dreams play a significant role throughout the novel, fittingly so in a book about a psychoanalyst. The opening scene is also spooky, with a boy seen at dusk through a window in an apple orchard that divides the Gavender and Small properties.

This novel is not only funny but also deeply engaging. The ensemble cast is fascinating, each character complex and full of quirks, foibles, and faults. Harriet Gavender comes into her own during a crisis, finding strength she never knew she had. Monty feeds off the misery of others to distract himself from his own grief. Pinn is a sly and conniving character who thrives on chaos and causing trouble. David Gavender, in the midst of teenage turmoil, feels unseen and misunderstood. And Blaise Gavender is one of the most selfish characters I've ever encountered, a Grade-A narcissist who epitomizes the desire to have one's cake and eat it too. Monty and Blaise are classic Murdoch heroes, deeply flawed men conflicted and tormented in their marriages and relationships. The level of detail in the characterizations makes them and their problems feel incredibly real.

The vivid descriptions in The Sacred and Profane Love Machine are simply breathtaking. I wanted to devour them with a spoon and savor them for a long time. The twilight, the country houses, the history and layout of those houses and the grounds – it was all so beautifully描绘. I also adored the erudite references to art and antiquity, which, as always in Murdoch's works, enrich the story and add depth. This book is a testament to Murdoch's intelligence and literary prowess. Her mind was truly one of a kind, bright and diamond sharp.

The Sacred and Profane Love Machine reminds me of Jane Austen in its exploration of human nature and its use of deliciously old-fashioned prose. It's amazing how Murdoch can adopt different writing styles even within a single novel. There are also interesting passages about writing and being a writer, adding another layer of depth to the story. This is a tale of people's separate loneliness, of individuals suffering privately while in close proximity to one another. They are next to each other yet isolated in their personal hells.

This work delves into power structures and dynamics, exploring the shifting, passing, and taking of control. My favorite character was Harriet, and I loved watching her reclaim her identity, her sense of self, and her power. The funny pack of dogs that follow her around everywhere and have distinct personalities were also a charming addition. Murdoch explores the dark desires and hidden aspects of people's characters, whether they fight to control them or give in. She writes about the reasons for wanting to commit suicide and the feeling of being emotionally and circumstantially trapped with such honesty. Blaise's murky justifications are done particularly well. The book culminates in a shocking finale that is both exciting and unpredictable. So much happens at once, and you can't guess what will happen next or how it will all end. During the crisis, everything comes together and falls apart with alarming rapidity, and there's a great and sly use of Chekhov's gun.

In conclusion, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine is a rich and rewarding novel that is well worth diving into. It's filled with beautiful and haunting imagery, and Murdoch's descriptions and turns of phrase are truly unique. This work is a master class in great prose, and in the world of this novel, as in the real world, everyone must muddle along, entrapped in their own falsity and uncertainty, in this thing we call the love machine – also known as life.