Obviously, Iris Murdoch is a genius and I love, adore and worship her, but I have to say that this isn't one of my favourites of her novels. I found it far too disturbing, unsettling and oppressive, and the characters and dialogue not sufficiently believable and fluid (something that Murdoch usually does so wonderfully). Needless to say, much of it is absolutely genius, and I loved the atmosphere she so masterfully creates. However, I found many of the things that happen profoundly disquieting, and the philosophical discussions were very dense, making me feel like I'm missing the point of everything. I'm notoriously bad at understanding philosophy, in fact it usually sends me into extensive agonised questionings of whether or not I even have basic intelligence. I think maybe my main problem is that there are a lot of characters, and almost all of them seemed extremely nebulous to me. I didn't find the events as exciting as I normally do in Murdoch's books, usually I can't wait to find out what will happen next and spend most of the book guessing and gasping at the next fascinating twist. This one seemed a bit flat to me.
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