Pretty much, it's about a bunch of self-absorbed, lonely, and lusty individuals.

They don't seem to do much with their lives, and yet they end up sleeping together or at least having the desire to.

I actually considered giving up halfway through the book, but somehow I powered through.

Iris writes quite well, I must admit. Her prose has a certain charm.

However, at times, she gets a little too poetic for my personal liking.

It feels like she's trying too hard to make the words sound beautiful, and it takes away from the story a bit.

Based on this experience, I probably won't read anymore of her books.

I think I'll look for something that's a bit more straightforward and less flowery in its language.

Maybe a different author will be able to capture my attention and keep me engaged from start to finish.

Who knows, but for now, I'm done with Iris's books.

Some people also believe that. That life can be redeemed. But it couldn't be and that was what was so terrible. He had loved only a few people and had loved them badly, in a selfish way.

Bruno is a nonagenarian confined to a bed due to an illness that is gradually consuming him. He knows that death is near, just a matter of days, yet he still resists. The ghosts of the past haunt him, his wife, an old lover, and an event that led them to disaster. A daughter who died under strange circumstances and a son with whom he hasn't spoken in a long time make him reflect on how badly he has behaved in life. He is cared for by his son-in-law and a housekeeper. The appearance of his son, his daughter-in-law, and her sister gives rise to a story of loves and misunderstandings among these characters, plus a nurse, the sinister Niles. In a way similar to Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", the loves will become intertwined in an almost devious manner. The great theme of the novel is undoubtedly the search for love, but Murdoch focuses on the stage of falling in love. Just as in Shakespeare's comedy, when a potion was taken, an intense feeling of love was born, the same happens here among the characters. What the author develops very well is, on the one hand, what happens around us when we act based on being in love. Bruno, in his memories, laments the pain he caused to Jane, his wife. The same goes for the rest of the characters. And, secondly, and here Murdoch works wonders, is what happens when the falling in love ends and reason sets in. The fall is hard. The author's prose is addictive, the dialogues are very well written, but the most interesting thing comes once the book is finished. It makes you reflect for days, makes you review your own story, your choices. This is what makes it a necessary work.

There are books that I adore, but whose reading, I must admit, exhausts me. However, Murdoch never tires. Her light way of approaching universal themes such as love, beauty, death, God, good and evil, in plots full of entanglements, surprising changes, unexpected declarations, transcendental appearances that border on, if not cross, the line of implausibility (I don't know where I read that Murdoch's books were described as philosophical vaudevilles, but I think it's a very accurate expression), keeps you glued to her pages until you reach the last one, eager to start the first of another of her novels. "The Dream of Bruno" is a clear example of what I'm saying. If you don't like it, it means Murdoch is not for you, don't try again.

Here we talk about falling in love and its ravages, about jealousy, about selfish people, as we all are, who try to behave decently and things don't go well for them, about revenge, about the possibility of change and improvement, about the physical deterioration that accompanies aging and intensifies the feeling of confinement in a body that seems less and less ours, about seeing pity and disgust in the eyes of others who now only see you as a relic that shouldn't be alive anymore, and also about an aspect of aging that I think is little emphasized: in the author's own words, the increasingly heavy burden of one's own conscience. And I don't just mean terrible things we may have done, which is not very common. I mean the many situations in which we simply didn't live up to the idea we have of ourselves, things that perhaps only we remember, not even our "victims", but that accumulate and acquire an increasing weight in our soul and end up being more real, present, and unchangeable than everything that surrounds us.

\\n   “The drama of sleeping and waking had become something disturbing and terrifying, now that his own conscience could mean such a heavy burden… It was very unfair to find oneself forced to bear the moral weight of words said carelessly, to carry that around for years and years until it became a monstrous and unwanted part of oneself” \\n

We also talk about death, about how to face it, about how its proximity makes us look back and suffer for everything we did or didn't do and that is impossible to change, about the possibility of forgiveness, about how death seems to transform all of life into a dream.

\\n   “Everything is a dream -he thought-, one goes through life in a dream, everything is too hard. Death refutes induction. There is no objective to aim for. There is only a dream, its texture, its essence, and in the end we only subsist in the dream of another, a shadow on another shadow, fading, fading, fading” \\n

But fundamentally we talk about love, about love as the foundation of everything important. Despite its length, I can't resist bringing this illustrative quote here.

\\n   “Love is a strange thing. There is no doubt that it and only it keeps the world in motion. It is our only significant activity. Everything else is just dust and tinsel and humiliation of the spirit. But, on the other hand, how many problems it causes. How many impossible dreams it creates, how it moves us to embrace the feet of the unattainable. It's fantastic to think that everyone is allowed to love those they desire, whoever in some way pleases them. There is nothing in nature that prohibits it. Any old type can look at a king, the unworthy can love the good, the good the unworthy, the unworthy the unworthy and the good the good. The signal sounds, and the great light turns on revealing perhaps the reality or perhaps the illusion. And how often, unfortunately, my very dear Danby, one loves only one, in total isolation, in a vain encapsulation, while what is hidden feeds on the flesh of his heart. It's not a matter of conventions. Love knows no convention. Anything can happen, so in a certain way, in a terrible, terrible certain way, there is no impossibility” \\n

The love that when it appears always supposes a before and an after in our lives and not always for the good of the lovers and often affecting the life of third parties for the worse. Love intensifies everything and can change a happy life into paradise as much as into hell.

\\n   “He would have been happy sleeping with Adelaide, completely happy playing with Diana. Those beings belonged to his vulgar and dull world, to his vulgar and ordinary conscience. Meeting Lisa was the abrupt change from half-light to total clarity, from gray tones to vivid colors, from the shaded to the line, to the vigor of the form” \\n

4.5 stars

This is an author who is well worth discovering and reading, reading and reading.

Her works are like hidden treasures waiting to be unearthed. Each page is filled with vivid descriptions and engaging storylines that draw the reader in and keep them hooked until the very end.

Whether it's a thrilling mystery, a heartwarming romance, or a thought-provoking piece of literary fiction, this author has the ability to transport the reader to another world and make them feel as if they are a part of the story.

Her writing style is unique and captivating, with a flow that makes the words seem to dance on the page.

So if you're looking for a new author to add to your reading list, look no further than this one. You won't be disappointed.