Reading 1001 discussion

A Severed Head - Iris Murdoch; A real soap opera of a story. Supposedly a lot of people's favorite but I was not inthralled. It really is a story of a bunch of people having sex with each other, audultery, incest, you name it. Lots of messiness, smoking and drinking. Just not my favorite Murdoch. This book has characters that there is little to like about them. Martin is awful. Such a whiny baby, wants two women and doesn't see why he can't have two but the other characters really are no better.

Rating: 3 stars


I like Murdoch's writing, but this was just ok for me. This is a book about a male protagonist that is written by a woman. As Kristel alluded to, there is a lot of bed-hopping going on here. The unlikable main characters form, not a love triangle, but more of a pentagon or hexagon. Many less than pleasant events ensue. This book is definitely a product of its time.

At the time this was written, just as the world was headed into the so called sexual revolution (before AIDS), this book was reviewed as if it were a farce or a satirical take on the corrupted morals of the British middle class. However, reading it some 60 years later, I perceived little comedy and the farce was a dreary one of people selfishly desperate for love and understanding which included getting everything that they wanted including multiple loves that were exciting, comforting, inaccessible, intimate....you get it. Murdoch does have a way of making her characters come alive. There is tension in the book, which in a way is remarkable given that I didn't care for any of the characters. The tension is that of having claustrophobia when surrounded by a tight group of people. I wanted to break out. I wanted the characters to break out. I wanted them all to go away. Some of them do. There were moments when Murdoch really pulled it off with a twist or a surprise and thankfully all the sex was off screen or off the page so to speak. I usually like Murdoch's work but this was not a favorite.