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One of my reading goals for this year is to read an Iris Murdoch. The Sea, The Sea seems to be her most lauded, but for Murdoch fans: is this your favorite, or the best place to start for a newby?
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Matthew
The Sea, The Sea is the fifth Murdoch book I've read, the others being Under the Net, Bruno's Dream, A Message to the Planet, and The Black Prince. Out of all of those, I feel like Under the Net is the best place to start. At least for me, it was a little more accessible than The Sea, The Sea-- but I also think you can't go wrong with either, because The Sea, The Sea was great too!
Dona Scott
I loved The Sea,The Sea! My absolute favorite. I was very much engaged with the characters and found myself shouting at Charles. A magnificent book which I highly recommend. That said, I’m a huge Iris Murdoch fan and have enjoyed all her novels.
Paul
I started with A Fairly Honourable Defeat and I LOVED it so much, it's shorter and more accessible than The Sea, The Sea, so I'd firmly recommend that one. She takes a small cast of characters and somehow makes a very trivial threat to their happiness seem like an incredibly tense thriller.
That said, I do think The Sea, The Sea is really quite special, but it starts out (about the first 10%) deliberately slow and deceptive - much like a treacherous low tide, now I think about it, I wonder how deep that metaphor goes, there's some almost airless moments of calm in between some nearly unbearable storms. That 10% contains a lot of beautiful character building and sea imagery though! And there's a lot of play with the idea of an unreliable narrator who is nevertheless trying his very best to tell everything honestly, as much as his pride can take it.
Those two are the only two of the five of hers I've re-read, and I think I liked them even more the second time round, so I'm actually going to have another go at some I didn't connect with as much.
That said, I do think The Sea, The Sea is really quite special, but it starts out (about the first 10%) deliberately slow and deceptive - much like a treacherous low tide, now I think about it, I wonder how deep that metaphor goes, there's some almost airless moments of calm in between some nearly unbearable storms. That 10% contains a lot of beautiful character building and sea imagery though! And there's a lot of play with the idea of an unreliable narrator who is nevertheless trying his very best to tell everything honestly, as much as his pride can take it.
Those two are the only two of the five of hers I've re-read, and I think I liked them even more the second time round, so I'm actually going to have another go at some I didn't connect with as much.
Doug
Hi. I too am new to Murdoch so perhaps not quite the intended audience for your question. I read The Bell earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed it. I have followed up with The Sea The Sea and, though I liked and appreciated it, I found it less appealing overall, for all that the characters are equally as inventively drawn if not more so.
Kim
I'm another newby - reading my first Murdoch novel at the moment. I picked up Under the Net - her first novel - on impulse at the bookstore and I am really enjoying it, enough to be on here looking at which of hers to read next :-)
The Reading Frog
I loved The Unicorn. It haunted me. It was like a dream. It was slow, set on an island, they were drinking whiskey and the days melt into one.
Lisa Jayne
Hi Lesley i recently read The sandcastle ,i haven,t read any of her books before as i was wrongly informed that her books were complicated and sometimes difficult to decipher,but i really enjoyed this book it took me back to the 50,s she was a very intelligent women and her books can be read in several ways according to the preface,i,m now looking for her other books to read.
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