Books, Arts & Manners: The One That Got Away

The Book and the Brotherhood, by Iris Murdoch (Viking, 607 pp., $19.95)

Iris Murdoch’s characters never seem to have jobs. Some of them are retired, many of them are rich. If they are actors, they are “between shows.” If they are writers, they are either “blocked” or—at the very least —successful, so they don’t have to spend much time at it. In the mean time, they intellectualize, fall impossibly and fatally in love, plot their own deaths and their friends’, and complicate their lives beyond recognition.

JG

About the Author

Jeff Giles

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The Book and the Brotherhood, by Iris Murdoch (Viking, 607 pp., $19.95)

Iris Murdoch’s characters never seem to have jobs. Some of them are retired, many of them are rich. If they are actors, they are “between shows.” If they are writers, they are either “blocked” or—at the very least —successful, so they don’t have to spend much time at it. In the mean time, they intellectualize, fall impossibly and fatally in love, plot their own deaths and their friends’, and complicate their lives beyond recognition.