Mysterious, beautiful, powerful, it's all the usual. I feel like all I do on this blog is praise Iris Murdoch, but I can't get enough of her. I read this before but didn't remember it very well, and it was a delight to read again. What I really noticed this time around is the incredible way Murdoch manages to have this sense of magic and transformation in the ordinary world; characters are constantly looking at something, then turning back around and looking again and realising that it's something completely different. Yet it's all treated in the most ordinary way, like a boy could easily be mistaken for a dog. There's this constant sense that the entire world is unstable and sliding away, that everything takes place on a mythical plane that might at any second me swept away by an enchanter. I loved the instability of the characters and the very self-conscious engagement with the idea of fate. I don't know much about Murdoch's philosophical stance (I keep promising myself to read her non-fiction but I'm scared) but maybe it's because I don't really understand it that I find her books so fascinating and enigmatic.
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