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Title: The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch ISBN: 0-14-002476-X Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Flows Gracefully
Comment: "The Unicorn" has great pacing that makes you want to turn the page and see what happens next. It's slowed only by the characters' self-analysis. We might say there's a swamp of feeling that grows to a flood of feeling which paralells the weather within the story. Unicorn is set in a remote area of the British Isles by the sea. The story alternates characters through whom we see the story in its different parts: Marian, a teacher who comes to Gaze Castle and Effingham who's in love with 3 different women at different times, and who, through profuse self-analysis, is able to talk himself out of each of them. Both characters embody the yin and yang of uncertainty. It's their travel through waves of emotional uncertainty that gives the tale it's life-like feel. The supporting characters are delightfully distinct. Violet Evercreech is a judgmental oracle that made me picture Lily Tomlin running around the castle. Gerald Scottow is compex mix of opportunist and homosexual domineer. Denis is somber and taciturn, attracted briefly to Marian. The best chapter is Denis' rescue of Effingham. Jamsie, Scottow's boy toy, is delightfully weak. At the center of the storm is Hannah around whom Murdoch swirls the tale. Although the dead bodies tend to multiply quickly, we leave Unicorn with a bittersweet regret. This is one to savor! Enjoy!
Rating: 3
Summary: The Unicorn wades into a Gothic swamp...
Comment: I was pleased with An Unofficial Rose by Dame Iris Murdoch. Her prose had an ethereal quality combined with the very best and elegant of the British reserve. So when The Unicorn beaconed from a shelf in a used bookstore, I happily succumbed.
I do love the fantastic and the fairytale genre, a great vehicle for great ideas.
The book starts out well enough, laying out the marshy grounds and casting enough fog for three Gothic horror stories. I could almost hear the growls of the Hound Of the Baskervilles while the characters wonder across the bog. The dim epicenter of the story is the beautiful, mysterious and of course aristocratic Hannah. She seems to be voluntarily enduring confinement in the familial castle. Her past as well as the past of her household is murkier then the flood waters in the local stream. Sleeping Beauty is cited more than once. Naturally, almost every character in the book, male or female, obsesses with Hannah and even tries on the shining armor of the rescuer prince. In other words, they all try to resuscitate her to normal life.
So far so good. Then the violent denouement comes and all of a sudden we have more corpses then a Shakesperean tragedy. The dialogue becomes less and less credible and while Shakespearean deaths are written in soul-shattering verse, Dame Iris succeeds in re-enacting the atmosphere of a daytime soap opera. I know the comparison is unfair, the gap is too wide between the tragic and melodramatic but I couldn't help myself.
Overall, an unsatisfying experience, a story unworthy of her otherwise eloquent voice.
Rating: 2
Summary: The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch
Comment: This novel can be summarized simply and briefly. If you like Jerry Springer, you'll love "The Unicorn". It is not even close to reality.
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Title: The Bell (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Iris Murdoch, A. S. Byatt ISBN: 0141186690 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 27 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (Penguin Books) by Iris Murdoch ISBN: 0140041117 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1984 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch ISBN: 0140020039 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1976 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Black Prince (Penguin Classics) by Iris Murdoch ISBN: 0142180114 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 25 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch ISBN: 0140030344 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1978 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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