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The Book and the Brotherhood
 
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The Book and the Brotherhood (Paperback)

by Iris Murdoch (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 608 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (3 April 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099433540
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099433545
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.2 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 252,787 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #39 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Murdoch, Iris
    #49 in  Books > Fiction > Contemporary Fiction: 1970 Onwards > Women's Literary Fiction

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Product Description

Review
'A thoroughly gripping, stimulating, and challenging fiction' The Times

Product Description
Many years ago Gerard Hernshaw and his friends 'commissioned' one of their number to write a political book. Time passes and opinions change. 'Why should we go on supporting a book which we detest?' Rose Curtland asks. 'The brotherhood of Western intellectuals versus the book of history,' Jenkin Riderhood suggests. The theft of a wife further embroils the situation. Moral indignation must be separated from political disagreement. Tamar Hernshaw has a different trouble and a terrible secret. Can one die of shame? In another quarter a suicide pact seems the solution. Duncan Cambus thinks that, since it is a tragedy, someone must die. Someone dies. Rose, who has gone on loving without hope, at least deserves a reward.

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A book about the reality of life and love, 7 May 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: The Book and the Brotherhood (Penguin fiction) (Paperback)
The author is very clever at creating believable characters and portrays complex emotions and thoughts extremely well. It's believable; it doesn't romanticise relationships; it does not shy away from the darker emotions; there is no 'happy ever after' (a refreshing change from many novels). Friendship and love are analysed in a raw style and stripped bare; in this way, to me, this book exposes many other less conscientious novels as putting a rosy glow on relationships. In this novel, Iris Murdoch does not romanticise relationships and the human experience for the benefit of her readers; she represents the stark reality of life with astounding clarity. It is an absorbing read; the characters become people you know; they come into existence in their own right. I wish the book had no end.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Adoration is not enough!, 12 Jul 2006
Whenever I pick up an unread Iris I fear this next tale will disappoint. Fortunately that day has yet to arrive and I am almost two thirds through her oeuvre. The Book and the Brotherhood is a beautiful story, a wonder, an awesome feast of Murdochian delights. And how I indulged myself in such magisterial fare. I feel an extreme fanaticism in my praise for this novel but am consoled as I recollect the obsessive natures of the characters that inhabit this tale of political and philosophical musings, intellectual hedonism and compulsive passion. The mystical element in this story impregnates the narrative like a supernatural force that is ultimately unknowable but leaves behind the indiscernible substance of Fate. Indeed the destiny of the characters seems to be unalterably predetermined and I felt a spontaneous tension between (not intentionally) predicting the possibilities open to these characters and shock at the eventual outcomes. The magic is pure and there are numerous examples of Iris's genius at placing the foibles of human action or inaction closer to their consequences than, perhaps, we would like to admit?
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5.0 out of 5 stars Emotionally turbulent, tense and hysterical, chaotic and tragic, and yet quite hilarious, 18 May 2008
By Trevor Coote "Trevor Coote" (Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Book and the Brotherhood (Penguin fiction) (Paperback)
I am never certain of the place of Iris Murdoch's writing in the pantheon of world literature but she must be considered by any standards a major novelist. If you are familiar with her works then it is unlikely that you will read this review but instead will just go out and buy the book and enjoy it. It is one of her best. If you are not familiar with them then I am able to give an overview of the recurrent themes which make them so absorbing, while not wishing to give the impression that they are in any way formulaic.
Most of her novels revolve around a small clique of upper-middle class academics who in the past have attended Oxbridge together. They are interconnected by a complicated but self-contained network of love affairs, both open and clandestine. Many are homosexual, and there is normally at least one Jewish character. There is also very often a pivotal individual, either an enchanter or charismatic, or a mysterious or demonic über-intellectual held in awe by the others, and around whom many of the tragic events take place (in the Book and the Brotherhood it is David Crimond). Having assembled a cast of characters she then sets about putting them through the most intense emotional torture, to such an extent that they nearly all hover on the edge of, or tumble into, hysteria or insanity, with dire consequences. But Iris Murdoch gives such a penetrating, almost Dostoyevskian, insight into their psychology that you soon forget that they are generally a set of quite absurd and theatrically self-obsessed individuals, and become concerned about their fates.
Although her works are intellectual they are terrific, riveting stories. There are a number of familiar `Murdoch' themes, however: the Irish question (formerly known as the Irish problem but really all along the English problem); lapsed Catholicism and other religious uncertainty; the search for a role in life for those with the highest education but who lack the other qualities required for success. Yet, above all her books are about love, although the love that we see, far from being the great transforming power, so often turns out to be a truly destructive force. All the characters are tyrannically obsessive over people with whom they fall in love, and suicidal over their rejections. All live in mortal terror of remaining unloved in this world. But quietly, almost unnoticed beneath this obsession with love, there are real, deep-rooted, powerful and moving friendships which often help them over come the pain of their emotions.
The Book and the Brotherhood opens at an Oxford ball in the 1980s where all the main characters and their complicated relationships are introduced. We again have a clique of neurotic academics who had been so in awe of David Crimond's intellect at Oxford that they had clubbed together to support him financially to write a quasi-Marxist politico-philosophical tract. They continued to do so down the years even though they had grown to dislike both him and the central thesis of his book in which advocates the destruction of liberal democracy. As time passes none dare question him about his progress for fear of his reaction, unhinged individual that he is. It is further complicated when, at the ball, he steals the wife of one of his benefactors for the second time. As ever with Iris Murdoch the ensuing turmoil and emotional turbulence is utterly fraught, there is much tension and hysteria, chaos and tragedy, and yet it all really quite hilarious. One of my very favourite authors.
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