I finished the above book last week and thought i'd post about it. It's a story about a retiring theatre director who buys a house by the sea (surprisingly) and begins to recount his memoirs in diary form. The book is written by the main character as it were. It starts off pretty tranquil with some beautiful and quite evocative descriptions of the sea, and the lead, Charles Arrowby's monologueing his general pottering about, then becomes something quite different. I don't want to give away the plot (and ruin it for the hundreds who read this blog on a daily basis), but suffice to say it becomes a lot tenser. Being written from the leads perspective everything is written in the past tense, and all from his perspective, and this conjured up some really insular feelings for me. Sometimes i would find myself siding with his opinion, at other points against it, and eventually feeling like it was my opinion regardless, the mad heights which he reaches seemed to be acceptable to me until i reached the end of the book. I'm also impressed with Iris Murdoch's writing from the perspective of a male, as much as Charles Arrorwby is hardly your average 'bloke', the writing still feels firmly masculine. I would recommend the book, providing you're willing to devote some time (it's a bit on the wide side), and plenty of patience.
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