Très amusing. Similar in tone to Pursuit of Love. Funny and sweet. A young man in search of himself, found with the help of a dog (not quite, but there is a dog that seems to act with a domesticating influence)

One of the queerest, most manic, most wonderful books I have read in a long time.

Iris Murdoch's debut novel is a disconcerting, shabby picaresque novel following the young hack writer Jake Donahue through a series of adventures. For the most part, it falls into my particular favourite type of picaresque: the adventure novel largely set over a few days. Murdoch is already comfortably inhabiting the body of a downtrodden, almost-broken, deeply strange protagonist, whose voice we can never entirely trust (Jake is keen to narrate his own story - a little too keen), and whose world seems to be a series of set-pieces that emerge out of otherwise ordinary life.

What is the plot? This is the kind of novel where certain literary snobs would say "the plot doesn't matter" but, reader, do not listen to them. In this case, the plot is precisely point. In a nutshell: Jake is kicked out by a woman, goes fawning back to two actress sisters from his past, uncovers a potential conspiracy involving a screenplay secretly adapted from a translation of a French novel he wrote some time ago, goes on a mad pub crawl with his gadabout mates, steals a film star dog who subsequently saves him from a police raid in the aftermath of a socialist party riot amidst an Ancient Roman film set in the middle of London, is mistaken for an escaped mental patient by an alley full of suburban gossips, pursues his lady love through Paris on Bastille Day, takes an unexpected job as a hospital orderly where his doubts and concerns come back to haunt him during a daring midnight visit to an incapacitated friend, and must consider whether he will position himself high(brow) or low on the unsteady rope ladder that is a literary career - or whether he even has the chops to climb the ladder at all. Throw in some Plato and a dash of Wittgenstein, a starling invasion straight out of Hitchcock's The Birds, and an avant-garde mime theatre, and you have Under the Net.

Murdoch's novel, first published in 1957, seems to sit quite comfortably within the (poorly named) 'Angry Young Man' cultural epoch - although Jake is not so much a victim of society as a personal exploration of those who exist comfortably in the margins. He has never held a job aside from writing until he signs up as an orderly, and is impressed by how easily he gets this one given how much his friends complain about the process. ("You will point out, and quite rightly", Jake says in one of Murdoch's moments of wry hilarity, that hospital orderly is perhaps a job where supply eclipses demand, "whereas what my friends were finding it so difficult to become was higher civil servants, columnists of the London dailies, officials of the British Council, fellows of colleges, or governors of the BBC. That is true.") Whereas her fellow novelists were interested in the temporal, Murdoch constantly allows us to see the metaphysical moments, the sublime and the ridiculous. But she is not writing, contrary to the philosophers who want to claim this text as their own, about what lies beyond the plot; Murdoch is finding the sublime within what is taking place, within human interaction and yearning.

And there is so much yearning. Although we have reason to doubt some of Jake's suspicions very early, he is a man easily compelled to new feeling: sudden love, sudden self-doubt, convinced he has destroyed a friendship or is under attack from the slightest of impulses. He is a fascinating character and, while I might concede that I'm not sure Murdoch entirely captures what it is like to be a male, the fulcrum around which her fairytale-like world rotates. (On a more terrestrial note, how times have changed - Jake tells us on the first page that his friend-cum-assistant Finn usually waits for him in bed, and later spends much of the book deeply pining for an old friend named Hugo. I had to separate myself entirely from 2020 to see these as the perfectly normal actions of a sensitive and impoverished heterosexual man!)

It is clear that one of my great projects for the 2020s will be to read all twenty-six of Murdoch's novels in order. I listened to the audiobook narrated by the pitch-perfect Samuel West, and I heartily recommend it for the way that West teases out both the uproarious comedy and the more delicate variety, yet I found myself returning to my copy of the book often to reread paragraphs or phrases just to let the author wash over me. I suspect that, structurally, or literarily, Under the Net is not one of Murdoch's greatest novels. (As her debut, it hardly could be!) But clearly from the Top 100 lists it frequently appears on, the novel has a place in the heart of many writers, and is perhaps an easier access point to her oeuvre than most.

Such fun. ( )

"Under the Net" is Number 95 on the Modern Library’s list of 100 best novels of all time. How it got on that list is a complete mystery to me. It is the story of a detestable “young man” James (his age is never given) but if he is indeed young it might be the only redeeming quality about him because one could then plead he was “too young to know any better.”

James admits in Chapter One that he lies to everyone, lives by mooching off other people (mostly women), moving from one acquaintance to another living rent free until they get tired of him and throw him out. James does not believe in holding a “real” job so lives on small commissions he earns for translating French books to English, and when that does not provide sufficient income he just borrows from friends and acquaintances - or worse - just leaves them holding the bill for taxi rides, massive bar bills, and other miscellaneous expenses. Oh, and did I mention James also is great at picking locks and spends a good deal of time during the plot in places he broke into?

The plot takes place in just a few short weeks as James is once again being thrown out of his rent free living arrangement, and he must scramble to find a new place to sleep. Had the writing been less pretentious I may have taken the plot more seriously. But the story is filled with obscure observations from James, “The Bounty Belfounder studio is situated in the suburb of Southern London where contingency reaches the point of nausea.” (page 139) And, “I wondered what curious fault in the social stratification should have brought her into contact with a man who could inspire her to dress like that.” (page 11) Not only is the dialogue superficial, but it implies that James thinks himself superior to most of the other characters - which is irritating, and inconceivable. And since he is the one telling the story, it certainly decreased the motivation to keep reading.

But then again, the plot could not be taken seriously because it was idiotic, nonsensical, and preposterous. I should have suspected as much, since the back cover of the novel has a sentence of praise from Kingsley Amis saying, “A winner… she is a distinguished novelist of a rare kind.” Kinglsey Amis is one my least favorite authors and I absolutely detested his novel "Lucky Jim".

Perhaps reading about the incompetence and idiotic behavior of others bolsters some readers egos. Or perhaps some readers will actually find this novel to be humorous and entertaining. For me it was an absolute waste of time and I have totally lost faith in the capacity of the Modern Library to judge which novels belong on the list of best 100 of all time.

Rated 1 Star, July 2023 ( )

Now that I've decided to try to 'review' each book that I have cataloged, there will be books( like this one) where I may recall reading it some years ago, may or may not remember how or why I liked it, but still can recall only a few or maybe no details about the experience. ( )

I recently watched a film called Iris, in which Kate Winslet plays a young and vibrant Iris Murdoch and Judy Dench plays an older Iris Murdoch battling Alzheimer's disease. I've heard about Murdoch but had somehow never gotten around to reading any of her works. What a misfortune. I absolutely loved this book. The main character Jake, is a deeply troubled and very flawed man, and many of the reviews of this book talked about how when Hugo entered the story the book changed for them. And yes, I can see that. But truly, the character that completely Jake's life, and therefore the book was the dog Mars. The introduction of Mars made this a completely different book than what it was before he entered the story. This is truly, a story about the importance of man's best friend ! And what a difference they make in our lives. ( )