I knew nothing about this when I picked it up, other than it was famous. The cover said 'a rich, crowded, magical love story', but it is a twisted and painful tale of self delusion and cruelty. I guess it is a story that contains both magic and love, but that is not quite the same thing.

This book is 500 pages of living inside the head of Charles Arrowby. He is beautifully and painfully drawn, but deeply unlikable. Completely self obsessed, with no real model of how other people feel or want, he has bullied his way through his career in the theatre and now has retreated to the sea in retirement. A chance meeting with a long lost person from his childhood tips him over into obsession, from which much tragedy results. He ends a little older, and a little wiser, but still oh so very Charles. ( )

At first I didn't think that I was going to like this book but in the end it was a 4* read. The main character Charles was incredibly conceited! Despite the slow beginning and this obnoxious narrator, I became quite involved in the situation and characters. ( )

מסתבר שקראתי כבר לפני 45 שנה ופחות התלהבתי. שכחתי לגמרי והפעם התלהבתי יותר. מארג סבוך ומרתק של עלילה ותיאור של דמות מרתקת - המספר צ'רלס. נקרא בנשימה עצורה ובהתלהבות. הבעיה שבסוף אתה נשאר עם איזה חור, הן לגבי העלילה, זה מה שקרה? והן לגבי הפילוסופיה העמוקה יותר שמאחורי הסיפור - אז מה מורדוך באמת רוצה לומר? ולמרות האכזבה, ספר מורכב, ידעני ומופלא ( )

Tras muchos años de trabajo y muchas sábanas revueltas en el ejercicio de amores desganados, el gran Charles Arrowby, famoso dramaturgo, director y figura destacada de las tablas londinenses, decide retirarse de las candilejas para ir a un apartado rincón de la costa británica y escribir sus memorias.
Al tiempo que huye de una tormentosa vida sentimental, el hombre se empeña en revivir su primera pasión amorosa por una mujer que la vida ha convertido en un ama de casa escuálida, mientras la presencia insomne del mar le devuelve todas sus obsesiones, los espectros del pasado, los fantasmas de sus errores y la angustia de un futuro cansado.

“Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Judgments on people are never final, they emerge from summing up which at once suggest the need of reconsideration. Human arrangements are nothing but loose ends and hazy reckoning, whatever art may otherwise pretend to console us.”

Protagonist Charles Arrowby, in his sixties, is a retired actor, playwright, and theatre director. He has purchased Shruff End, a home in a small isolated English town by the sea. In an unusual coincidence, he runs into his first love, Hartley, who lives in town with her husband, Ben. He claims that he has born a torch for Hartley for many years. Charles is writing a memoir in which he describes his many lovers, jealousy, search for perfection, and how he has often “stolen” women away from someone else. The storyline quickly focuses on Hartley, and how Charles plans to win her back, thus repeating a pattern he has exhibited for years. A few friends, his cousin, Hartley’s son, and a couple of former paramours find Charles at Shruff End and add to the mayhem.

I interpreted this book as a story of narcissism and self-deception. It quickly becomes apparent that Charles is a narcissist, though the term is not used. He convinces himself that he is still “in love” with Hartley, even after decades have passed and he does not really know her anymore. Charles is the epitome of an unreliable narrator. He writes his view of events, only to contradict himself a few pages later. He says he is going to “try to be good” but rarely succeeds.

I found it intriguing that Charles seems to be trying to fashion his own life into a play, casting himself as the hero, and Hartley as the hapless victim needing to be rescued. Of course, real life does not normally cooperate with such artificial manipulations. And here, the best laid plans are bound to (and do) go awry.

I am surprised at how much I enjoyed this rather lengthy and densely written book, filled with unlikeable characters. Toward the end, the characters respond in unlikely ways to major events, but I was not sure whether these responses were supposed to be real or just the unreliable narrator’s interpretation.

I recommend it for the author’s creative use of language and a convincing portrait of a narcissist. It is probably a “love it or hate it” type book. I am not sure how I missed out on reading Iris Murdoch before now. She was a prolific writer, and I plan to read more of her work.
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