Unlikely Possibilities

A Word Child By Iris Murdoch

Viking, 391 pp., $8.95 One can easily become impatient with Iris Murdoch. This new novel is her 17th and, all considered, it is not terribly different from the work she has been producing tirelessly over the years. Once again she creates an unpredictable, slightly unbalanced world in which characters are guided more by instinct and passion than by good sense. Again she allows those characters to explore unlikely romantic and erotic possibilities, sometimes to the point of absurdity. And in the process she again manages to produce a number of wonderfully comic, often thought-provoking muddles. To expect Miss Murdoch to move in a new direction at this point in her career is, I think, hoping for too much. It is obvious that she is settled in her ways. Either we accept the repetitive nature of her art, as we do when considering such writers as Anthony Powell and Ivy Compton-Burnett, or we simply give up reading her. Since she is such a consistently entertaining and intelligent writer, I, for one, would be very reluctant to take the latter option.

RF

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Ronald De Feo

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A Word Child By Iris Murdoch

Viking, 391 pp., $8.95 One can easily become impatient with Iris Murdoch. This new novel is her 17th and, all considered, it is not terribly different from the work she has been producing tirelessly over the years. Once again she creates an unpredictable, slightly unbalanced world in which characters are guided more by instinct and passion than by good sense. Again she allows those characters to explore unlikely romantic and erotic possibilities, sometimes to the point of absurdity. And in the process she again manages to produce a number of wonderfully comic, often thought-provoking muddles. To expect Miss Murdoch to move in a new direction at this point in her career is, I think, hoping for too much. It is obvious that she is settled in her ways. Either we accept the repetitive nature of her art, as we do when considering such writers as Anthony Powell and Ivy Compton-Burnett, or we simply give up reading her. Since she is such a consistently entertaining and intelligent writer, I, for one, would be very reluctant to take the latter option.