Tedious! I may have enjoyed this book better were it about 200 pages shorter. At its current length, I think old Murdoch is really indulging herself. I can see that she is an excellent writer (in her descriptions of the sea and the delightfully simple food paragraphs) but I was overwhelmed by the histrionics and general inability to make the reader care about any of these ridiculous and unbelievable characters. Her prose reminds me of watching American movies made 40-50 years ago, you know, the ones where everyone has this stupid, affected accent that is neither American or British but I'll go ahead and call it pretentious American film dialect. And everything is a huge deal and people's emotions are highly overblown, well, that's how this book was to me. Funny, I went back to a review of a book I read by Murdoch a few years ago (only could remember I hated it but not what it was about or why) and it seems that I feel the same way about Murdoch then, see below.

"I'm sorry Katie, I did not enjoy this book. But I did finish reading it, which means that I at least found some glimmers of possibility laced throughout the story. I hated the dialogue, I found most of the characters to be excitable, excessive, obsessive and thoroughly annoying. I also thought the suggestions of romance between age groups disturbing. Moy and Clement? Aleph and Lucas? Harvey and Tessa? And does anyone in this book work? I can appreciate some of the references to mythology but to have to plod through this muck was not enough for me."