Books in Brief

The Unicorn, by Iris Murdoch (Viking, $5.00). Just as if Stella Gibbons had not written Cold Comfort Farm, that hilarious spoof of Bronte Angst, Hardy gloom, Lawrencian satyriasis, and Branwellian devilry, Miss Murdoch sends a sensible lass from the rational world of Jane Austen to the wilds of Scotland (dolmens, prehistoric sheep, phosphorescent bogs, Victorian mansions) to reside with a company of loonies that Krafft-Ebing, the Bronte family, Edward Gorey, and Shirley Jackson would walk ten miles and pay admission to see. We must admit simply that the Gothick Romance is of permanent interest, for Miss Murdoch’s wax-works is as entertaining as the best—mental health in plague conditions. But the fable discernible in the plot elevates her story far above the usual account of Old Home Week in Transylvania. We are convinced of a particular kind of suffering and learn quite a lot about its nature, and about what happens to life, when it is denied its fulfillment, in that insidious form of hate called spite. Such are the ravages, as a character remarks, of Courtly Love. And indeed the student of Plato and of the transformations and perversions of love will find much here to occupy his mind. The plot and tone are first-rate. Read on a rainy night, in complete silence.

G. DAVENPORT

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The Unicorn, by Iris Murdoch (Viking, $5.00). Just as if Stella Gibbons had not written Cold Comfort Farm, that hilarious spoof of Bronte Angst, Hardy gloom, Lawrencian satyriasis, and Branwellian devilry, Miss Murdoch sends a sensible lass from the rational world of Jane Austen to the wilds of Scotland (dolmens, prehistoric sheep, phosphorescent bogs, Victorian mansions) to reside with a company of loonies that Krafft-Ebing, the Bronte family, Edward Gorey, and Shirley Jackson would walk ten miles and pay admission to see. We must admit simply that the Gothick Romance is of permanent interest, for Miss Murdoch’s wax-works is as entertaining as the best—mental health in plague conditions. But the fable discernible in the plot elevates her story far above the usual account of Old Home Week in Transylvania. We are convinced of a particular kind of suffering and learn quite a lot about its nature, and about what happens to life, when it is denied its fulfillment, in that insidious form of hate called spite. Such are the ravages, as a character remarks, of Courtly Love. And indeed the student of Plato and of the transformations and perversions of love will find much here to occupy his mind. The plot and tone are first-rate. Read on a rainy night, in complete silence.

G. DAVENPORT