Fun little farce set in London and surrounding areas during the "Sexual Revolution" of the '60s.

Martin Lynch-Gibbons, a 41-year-old man, is quite content with his life. He is married to Antonia, who is 10 years older and whom he adores. However, he also has a mistress, the 20-something Georgie Hands.

But then his life takes a drastic turn when he discovers that not only has Antonia been having an affair with her psychoanalyst, Palmer Anderson (who is also a good friend of Martin's), but she is planning to leave him and marry Palmer. Surprisingly, they both claim to love him and want to keep him close.

And it gets even weirder from there. Martin falls under the spell of yet another woman. At first, he is repulsed by her, but then suddenly becomes obsessed with her. It becomes extremely difficult to keep track of who is sleeping with whom, but it makes for a lot of fun along the way.

The story is filled with humorous and absurd situations that unfold during this chaotic time. It explores the complex relationships and the changing attitudes towards sex and love during the "Sexual Revolution."

Overall, it's a lighthearted and entertaining farce that will keep readers engaged and laughing throughout.

Iris Murdoch's view on freedom is truly profound. According to her, freedom is not merely about an individual expressing and fulfilling their own desires. Instead, it is more about our ability to envision the existence of others and our capacity to accept others as they are. The emotion we call love is precisely the recognition of this otherness.

Murdoch's description of the world is so astonishing and interesting that you don't want to leave it. Her ideas make us think deeply about our relationships with others and our understanding of freedom.

Her work has had a significant impact on the field of philosophy and literature. It challenges us to look beyond our own selves and consider the perspectives and experiences of those around us.

To learn more about Iris Murdoch and her ideas, you can visit https://edebiyatdanostalji.blogspot.c...

The title of the book might suggest a gothic, horror, or at least a suspense novel; nothing could be further from the truth as in this work, the author explores and reveals the contradictions, fears, tensions, and confused feelings that inhabit the human being, exacerbated by the rigid social norms and, above all, by the prevailing morality. All of this is developed through her characters belonging to an affluent class in 1960s London who live in close proximity, which always poses challenges, sometimes insurmountable.

The novel is constructed with all the intelligence and great talents of Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999), including a veneer of a fine sense of humor that envelops the narrative. Definitely, her reflective prose, sometimes philosophical, refined, elegant, and meticulous, once again charms me and reaffirms itself in my tastes as one of my favorite 20th-century writers.

The character and narrator around whom the plot revolves is Martin Lynch - Gibbon, a wine merchant and husband of Antonia. Given his character, he is the one who receives most of the moral blows that the characters alternately deal, and none escapes the attacks that coexistence imposes, and in this case, what attacks!

Both Martin and Antonia have an extramarital relationship that gives rise to confusions and situations full of entanglements that are accentuated when all the characters interact. The other main characters are the young Georgie Hands, Martin's lover; the successful psychoanalyst named Palmer Anderson, who is Antonia's lover, and an incredible character in how he is carved, regardless of his good or bad characteristics: Honor Klein, an anthropologist, Palmer's half-sister, who gradually acquires a kind of subterranean and gradual protagonism. She is severe, coarse, indifferent, impenetrable, a strange woman and almost omnipresent who often appears silently in the most complicated moments of the plot and "whose face seems to be carved in wood".

I don't know which of the two characters, Honor or Martin, I liked more from a literary point of view as both lack elements that would make them admirable from another perspective. Martin is an insecure, hesitant, selfish person who wants the best of both worlds, playing both sides with his wife and his lover, and whose attitude towards life wavers between a negligible heroism and the most abject of humiliations.

Since it is Martin who narrates the novel, we can know his deep emotions, his motivations, his doubts, his fears, his moral values, and his few moments of tranquility. On the other hand, of the other characters, we perceive less profound things but narrated with extraordinary skill and sometimes with a poetic touch.

As the narrative progresses, we encounter unexpected situations, unforeseen twists where morality becomes an exaggeratedly malleable matter. The plot takes new turns continuously, provoked by intense emotions, sickly susceptibility, the imagination that produces problems and mental labyrinths, human folly, jealousy, unstable hope, and in short, all the ingredients in the service of a narrative that wavers between tragedy and comedy with its doses of fine irony. Without a doubt, a very well-finished novel that is read with great pleasure.

“No volvimos a hablarnos en serio, sino que nos tratamos con gran delicadeza, como una pareja de inválidos”.

I had no patience for this.

I do appreciate the prose style, and it's evident that Murdoch makes significant statements on sexual liberation. However, it is truly tiring. All the characters are equally unsympathetic, and their lives form a panorama of sexual behaviors that surely challenged the bourgeois minds in 1976.

They all continuously made me think of Caravaggio's Medusa, with her outraged expression of the injustice done to her while her snake-hair remains dangerously alive and capable of causing major damage to others. Definitely not very likable, but beautifully painted.

What are they? Victims? Perpetrators? Both? Or perhaps just hollow, shallow marionettes carrying out a danse macabre that has lost its charm after decades of sexual over-stimulation in media, art, and literature?

Or maybe it's just not relevant to me at this particular moment in time. That's possible. This was my first encounter with Iris Murdoch, and I suspect I expected more, as my prejudice was that she is one of the great modern writers. I won't abandon my carefully constructed idea (based on nothing tangible) until I have read at least one or two more of her works. She clearly has the ability to write.

But perhaps not necessarily the kind of novel that gets me excited.

I've been meaning to read another Murdoch book ever since I read the unsatisfying "Jackson's Dilemma," which may have been compromised by the author's early dementia. Certainly seemed that way to me, anyway.

Started last night when I needed to select a new book. It is VERY WELL WRITTEN. The prose is so smooth that it just glides along.

As the author continues to work her way towards some deeper level of black comedy (I think), the story is moving along nicely. So far, there's been a bit of satire in her presentation of upper-class English twits recognizable from Monty Python. BUT, so far they have been quite human-seeming, even if one would like to punch each of them in the face (and, one of them is an American). To be more accurate, these folks are perhaps more upper-middle class. Oh well, I'm not that well-informed about English class distinctions. It's good fun, though I'm grinding my teeth over the character of the hapless, utterly self-absorbed and spoiled narrator, Martin. You flippin' wimp and liar!

So, I'm nearing the end and so far everyone has kept his/her head. But, a VERY SHARP samurai sword has been introduced, so it looks like somebody's gonna get it. The final fillip as it were in this farrago of affluent foolishness. Some good laughs were had last night. One wonders at the plausibility of it all, but we are dealing with humans here, so...

- There's a lotta drinking.

- Being civilized = being ridiculous. People trying to get in touch with their feelings merely get further away from them.

- Antonia seems like a Bette Davis/Veronica Lake combo.

- The letters - will they turn up to plague Martin later on?

- The author uses the setting of yellow fog-bound London well. It's all a murky mess - and getting murkier.

I just looked up the film from 1970. Funny and typical: Lee Remick, an American actress, plays Antonia, who's British, while Richard Attenborough, an English actor, plays Palmer Anderson, who's an American. Maybe they switched the nationalities for the film script.

Finished last night with this fun and intelligent book. No actual head severing occurred, and I'm feeling a bit sheepish about having thought that it might. Oh well... too many murder mysteries, war stories and westerns, I guess. One quibble I might share is that one would think that there was anything intellectually compelling (or ever is in fiction) about examining human relational follies.... i.e. love stories. Intelligent, perceptive and interesting, perhaps, but not strictly "intellectual." IMHO... This book is a love story in a broad sense. Everyone seems to fall in love with everyone else. Martin, our narrator, seems to be in love with four different people at different times. The only ones not on the list are his gay secretaries and his siblings (and I'm not too sure about them). The whole thing is exasperating and silly, and the characters seem quite selfish, unstable, immature and shallow. But, Iris Murdoch makes it all quite interesting and entertaining.

- Can't see Lee Remick as Antonia.

- Palmer is an American for a reason. Totally self-absorbed and dangerous.

- 4.25* rounds down to 4*.

DNF at 80%

I'm truly sorry, Murdoch. However, this particular piece really gave me a hard time. I simply had nothing substantial to latch onto. There's only a certain limit to the amount of breaking up, getting back together, and engaging in those cliched illicit affairs with young students that I can endure.

It seems that the story became repetitive and predictable after a while. The lack of fresh ideas and unique plot developments made it difficult for me to maintain my interest. I found myself skimming through the pages, hoping for something more exciting to happen. But alas, it never did.

Maybe if the author had explored different themes or added some unexpected twists and turns, I might have been more inclined to finish the book. As it stands now, I had to call it quits at 80%.

A Severed Head delves deep into the intricate web of love and obsession. As we all know, the emotions of love and obsession within a single person's mind are complex and unique. When multiple people are involved, it transforms into a chaotic game of Twister, with each individual striving for their own happiness, often colliding and knocking over others in the process.

Murdoch, of course, doesn't rely on a simple game like Twister as a metaphor. Instead, she employs more elevated prose. She uses Dante's phrase “El m’ha percosso in terra e stammi sopra,” which roughly means “he has thrown me into the ground and stands over me.” I'm captivated by this vivid visual. I've experienced that kind of love and know precisely how it feels.

The severed head in the title is yet another powerful metaphor. It refers to the ancient belief of using a person's head as an oracle. Murdoch argues that obsession reduces the obsessed to something as inanimate and one-dimensional as a severed head. I can relate to this as well, having been in a state of obsession where someone becomes a mere caricature.

Perhaps this is why I have such a profound love for Murdoch's writing. She has a remarkable ability to handle human relationships and their vagaries with a fine, light, and exact touch. Her metaphors resonate with me, and her characters feel genuine. I understand their decision-making processes and how they arrive at their conclusions. Among all the writers of prize-winning modern literature, I find hers the most enjoyable. Her writing is incredibly philosophical without being stuffy, and thought-provoking without being condescending or elitist. These are extremely difficult lines to walk in the world of intellectual fiction, and she does it with perfection.

I would, however, have a minor quibble with the ending of this book. After crafting a tough and dark story that borders on fable or Greek myth, I think she let the characters off too easily at the end. But compared to the many strengths of the book, this is a very small complaint that I can easily overlook. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has fallen in love and had it all go wrong.

A Severed Head is a truly remarkable novel that only Iris Murdoch could have pulled off with such finesse.

Every character in this book is in the throes of an extreme, exaggerated, and absolutely confounding love with one another. Just when you think two characters couldn't possibly be involved in a relationship, you are proven wrong.

At the heart of it all is our narrator, Martin Lynch-Gibbon. At the start of the novel, he is in love with both his wife and his mistress. By the end, he has cycled through them and others numerous times.

The story is hilariously farcical, absurdly dramaticized, and completely unromantic, yet it is one of the best books I have ever read. It showcases Murdoch at her absolute finest.

What I adore about Iris is the multitude of ways in which her work can be interpreted. You can read this novel and simply enjoy her satirical Madcap Murdoch Moments.

Or, you can delve deeper and come to the unfortunate realization that we will never truly understand the inner workings of Murdoch's great mind.

All of her books seem to revolve around marriage, and in A Severed Head, I see the drama as a reflection of our inner lives, laid bare.

It is a propulsion towards anyone who will claim us, a desperate need for acceptance. When we are heartsick, things do feel this dramatic.

In fact, it makes you wonder how anyone can continue to live when faced with such intense emotions. But Murdoch is there, with several not-so-gentle nudges, reminding us that we are not essential to anyone.

We do not exist solely for each other. It is time to return to reality.

The very first grown-up novel that came into my possession was Iris Murdoch's The Philosopher's Pupil. My father had purchased it, yet it remained unread, gathering dust on the bookshelf. Somehow, I had this sense that its true potential was being suppressed by being left there untouched. I felt a tinge of sadness for it.

It wasn't a novel meant for children or young adults. I must have assumed that it was written in some sort of secret code that I hadn't yet deciphered (and indeed it was, but I wasn't aware of that at the time). I vividly recall the feeling of almost euphoria when I realized that I could actually understand nearly all of the words. The first page, far from being overly esoteric, simply recounted a car accident (if my memory serves me right).

Much of what I read later in the novel was a bit of a struggle, and a great deal of it went over my head. But that initial moment was what set me on the path of being a reader. So, I have a deep fondness for Murdoch's writing and always relish going back to her works.

However, I am no longer as naïve as I was then. This is an earlier work compared to many of the ones I have read by her, having been published in 1961. Her skill in depicting dialogue has improved significantly over time. I found some of the conversations in this novel to be rather comically stilted, with each utterance seemingly staged to drive towards a particular point. It is now more evident to me that her characters are primarily vehicles for exploring philosophical and psychological themes.

That being said, this is an intense exploration of intellectual, moral, and psychological growth, and what it truly means to be free, not just superficially. I love the way her characters think because I see so much of my own thought processes carefully delineated, although I'm not nearly as neurotic as her characters often seem to be. There is a surprise in the story that nearly knocked me off my chair, and I really enjoy books that have such unexpected twists.

This is a farce, in the best possible way.

The twists and turns of the relationships of the seven main characters are truly amazing in their ridiculously immoral manner.

We follow Martin in the first person throughout the story. He is a childish and selfish man who believes he is extremely clever at hiding his affair with a much younger woman from his beautiful older wife. However, he is not quite as clever as he thinks, and things soon take a turn for the worse for him. I cannot disclose any more details as it would spoil the ups and downs of this wonderful novel. Needless to say, all of the seven characters are either damaged or selfish, people who think only of themselves and care not who they hurt. In a modern-day setting, this would have been a dream show for Jeremy Kyle!

The story, for me, read like a play. I could easily imagine it being adapted well for the theatre if the cast was right. There are so many intricate details, and the farcical human interaction draws you into the story, even though Martin is a complete rogue. I was disappointed when it ended as I would have liked to know how he fared after a couple of weeks in his last situation.

Overall, this is a captivating and entertaining read that keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

I have always been a great admirer of Iris Murdoch's works, especially her novel The Bell. So, when I picked up this particular book, I had high expectations. However, to my great disappointment, I simply could not get into it.

The writing in this book is, without a doubt, excellent. Murdoch's command of the language is truly remarkable. Her descriptions are vivid and her prose is engaging. But unfortunately, the story itself failed to capture my interest. It seemed to drag on and on, and I found myself getting increasingly bored.

I also expected to find some humor in the book, as I had heard that it was supposed to be quite funny. But try as I might, I just couldn't see the humor. Maybe I was missing something, but to me, it just wasn't there.

In the end, I have to conclude that this book is simply not for me. It's a shame, really, because I know that Iris Murdoch is a brilliant author. But sometimes, even the best books don't resonate with every reader. And that's okay.

For a book that was supposed to be about a group of people all engaging in rather steamy and passionate liaisons with each other, this particular one turned out to be quite disappointingly unsexy.

It seemed that the focus was more on the overly anxious and self-deprecating thoughts of the rather pathetic male protagonist.

Rather than delving into the juicy details of the supposed sexual escapades, the author spent an inordinate amount of time exploring the protagonist's insecurities and doubts.

This made the story feel more like a psychological drama than a titillating tale of romance and desire.

As a result, the book failed to live up to its initial promise and left the reader feeling somewhat underwhelmed.