Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Witty, camp, beautifully written and a great story, 16 Mar 2002
By A Customer
...and you can't ask for more than that..Okay, so it takes a while to get into, but that said, I am a very impatient reader, frequently prone to discarding my latest purchases before I hit Chapter Two, yet the lyrical style and spooky hallucinations were enough to get me hooked. Agreed, the Rosinas and the Peregrines and the Gilberts are pretentious and theatrical, but that's the very point - they are ironically observed. Moreover, it takes a truly talented writer to create characters full of vanity and self absorption and still make them likeable - and Charles Arrowby (the novel's 'I') is the worst - yet most entertaining - egotist of them all. This was the first Iris Murdoch I have read, and I am as quick to dismiss overly literary novels as the next person, but I thought this had what many of the genre lack - a great, page-turning story. And above all, it's very, very funny. Give it a go!
|
|
|
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A lyrical masterpiece, 13 Feb 2002
I was gripped after reading the first few pages of Murdoch's book, and immediately fell in love with her vivid descriptive style. The book cleverly shifts its shape as it develops and the characters are not who you think they are. Like the sea it has many layers. A haunting and lyrical masterpiece.
|
|
|
28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
if you only read one Iris Murdoch make this it!, 6 Jan 2004
I went through a phase of being absolutely devoted to Iris Murdoch books, tracking them down wherever I could and adoring them. That was only a couple of years ago, but now you couldn't get me to read her for love nor money! Just as quickly as I fell in love with her I fell out again, but I will recommend this, "The Sea The Sea", for anyone who hasn't tried her before. It is a beautifully-written tale of a man, Charles Arrowby, who decides to leave his showbizzy life and retire to a remote cottage by the seaside. Once there he finds that an old childhood sweetheart, Mary Hartley, also lives in the nearby village. Insanely (to the reader) Charles thinks he absolutely MUST have her back in his life, at whatever cost, even though she herself has changed, both in looks and personality, and isn't remotely keen, or that interested in him. There are many good aspects to the story, most particularly in that it has more than it's fair share of mysteries about it, plus a fair assortment of camp characters to liven up proceedings a little. It's also wonderfully detailed about Charles's new life, one that would be envious to many people. The book on the whole is free of much of the pretentiousness that can ruin so many Murdoch novels. I don't actually regard Murdoch as that great a writer anymore, (she has a strange combination of writing with intensity, and yet at the same time being clinically distant from her characters), I think she has been over-valued, but this one is well worth reading.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Iris Murdoch
by Iris Murdoch
by Aravind Adiga
by Salman Rushdie
by Iris Murdoch
See all Product Description
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home