The Flight from the Enchanter by Iris Murdoch

After the large amount of average and substandard fiction that I've encountered, I really wanted to read something really good again, and this book did not disappoint. I had read it before, about five years ago, so I didn't remember it very well. It's not my favourite Murdoch novel, but it's a really outstanding early one. As usual, I was completely enchanted by her mixture of realism and the fantastic or bizarre. She creates such a magical atmosphere, writing in such a seemingly grounded and even matter-of-fact way, but everything she describes seems like a fantastic world. Some parts of this novel were even grotesque and I found them somewhat disturbing to read. As often in Murdoch novels, the whole story is presided over by the mysterious figure of Mischa Fox, the enchanter, who exerts an inexplicable fascination over everyone around him. It's left ambiguously unclear whether he drives the plot and engineers all the relationships in the novel, or whether he himself is caught up in them. I know that probably, it's a sort of philosophical example for Murdoch, the result of which I can't understand due to being incredible dense about philosophy, but I don't really care, I find the mystery of the events and characters highly satisfying. I love the way Murdoch balances all the interweaving plots, and creates the elaborate internal worlds of her characters.