- Hardcover: 311 pages
- Publisher: Viking Press; First Edition edition (1969)
- ISBN-10: 0670192686
- ISBN-13: 978-0670192687
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14.2 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,508,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Bruno's Dream (Vintage Classics)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"She is incapable of writing without fascinating and beautiful colour." --"The Times"
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Bruno, dying, obsessed with spiders and preoccupied with death and reconciliation, lies at the center of an intricate spider's web of relationships and passions: Bruno's estranged and grieving son Miles; Danby, Bruno's widowed son-in-law, consoling himself with the Adelaide the maid, one of Murdoch's finest comic creations; creepy Nigel the nurse and his besotted twin Will, fighter of duels. The flooding Thames brings about the climax, and all are left changed by love and forgiveness before the old man's death.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Iris Murdoch has the ability to capture human relationships in a literary form that is absorbing and garrulous. Bruno is very old and dying. He is an amateur spider expert trapped in his bed and possessed with an obsession for his box of stamps. The various characters that inhabit his life are caught up in a bizzare web of unrequited love, jealousy, mysticism, and secret desires. And all this set against a 1960s backdrop that still captures the bleak echo of post war London. The flint lock pistol duel in the pouring rain on the muddy banks of the Thames is Iris at her very best. Another stunning novel from one of this country's greatest writers.
3 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Although the events seem to start around an ill and old man, they are not so stunned at all. Surprises and typical human reactions, like love and hatred, or hesitation and letting everything go the way it is, or trying to be in control, or the choice between observing life and being a participant in it,etc. all present in this book. One should read it and try to capture the free will in life, if there is free will at all
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
32 of 32 people found the following review helpful
simply the best
4 July 2001
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Of all the whimsical, fictional worlds created by Iris Murdoch, this one is the most haunting and compelling. Her gift for "reading" the human condition is a given; her ability to find consistently some light in the darkest human soul is a gift. The novel's humor notwithstanding, this is a story of desperate people who, unbeknownst to them, live under the watchful, sheltering love of a strange, gentle man (Nigel), who is everywhere and nowhere, and who, along with his unwitting protege, Diana, represents the purest example I've seen in Murdoch's fiction of her concept of selfless love, the ability to be "good for nothing." The final scene between tortured, dying Bruno and spiritually exhausted Diana is as moving as any in literature. I've read all of Murdoch's novels, and each has its beauties. This one stays in my heart, like the memory of innocence.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
a forgotton gem
2 April 2000
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Bruno's Dream is one of the forgotton books in the Murdoch oeuvre. While I would not encourage anyone new to Murdoch to start here I would suggest that anyone who enjoys her uneven but magical and haunting books should seek this one out.
It has an acute sense of place and the portrayal of the shabby and little known area of Chelsea, London near the Lots Road power station is powerful. It is one of the first times that I have felt a need to search out the actual physical location of a novel (not much changed actually).
This story of a dying man is a gentle and unfashionable book. I will never forget it.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Another Wonderful Novel
2 Feb 2001
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Bruno's Dream is a wonderful novel and it's a shame it's out of print. I was so pleased to discover a copy in a used book store, and even more pleased upon reading it. The story revolves around Bruno, a dying old man, and the people in his life--both living and not. Murdoch once again demonstrates her incredible talent to explore the realities of human relationships, to get you thinking on the nature of friendship and love. The novel is at times humorous, serious, philisophical and bittersweet. A truly enjoyable read.
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