Remembering Iris

From StarTwo.

Review by DAPHNE LEE

ELEGY FOR IRIS

By John Bayley

Publisher: Picador, 288 pages

(ISBN: 978-0312421113)

WHETHER you are of the opinion that Iris Murdoch’s novels are full of subtle wisdom, graceful prose and illuminating insight or that her style is deliberately, snobbishly pedantic and ponderous, you still can’t deny that her writing reflects a mind that is at once complicated and lucid, vigorous and tranquil – to be sure, a beguiling if somewhat daunting combination of qualities.

That such a brain, teeming with ideas and bristling with life, should be destroyed by Alzheimer’s disease is something that would strike most of us as particularly unfair, tragic and ironic.

Murdoch was diagnosed with the mentally debilitating condition in the mid 1990s. Prior to her illness she was a scholar and philosopher, an admired and respected essayist, poet and playwright, and the author of 26 critically acclaimed novels. She was also a beloved wife and this fact remained unchanged until her death in 1999.

Elegy For Iris – also available as Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch (Abacus) – allows us a close-up view of the woman, her work, her life and marriage. It is a personal viewpoint – her husband, teacher and critic, John Bayley, is the author and he presents Murdoch as he knew her and saw her.

His description of Iris reveals an eccentric individual (a hoarder of odds and ends – stones, sticks, empty bottles – who delights in swimming nude in rivers and forest ponds), both brilliant and naive, whose extraordinary life is littered with mundane details.

Murdoch counted among her close friends literary luminaries such as Elizabeth Bowen, Barbara Pym and Kingsley Amis. Her fans included Benedictine monks. She replied personally to every letter she received from her readers; she won awards, including the 1978 Booker Prize for The Sea, The Sea; she enjoyed living in a state of comfortable squalor, leaving crumbs in bed, rarely washing; she was made a Dame of the British Empire; she applied lipstick amateurishly, blotting her mouth with scraps of writing paper.

Bayley is, himself, not without quirks. In the early days of their acquaintance he convinces himself that Murdoch is unattractive in order to avoid the anguish of thinking that others find her sexually appealing. He invites her to a ball and is disconcerted and displeased when she accepts. He secretly tails an old professor, one of Murdoch’s many admirers, from her rooms back to his hotel. He stands in her street for long stretches of time, simply gazing up at her lighted window. Taken out of context, these actions may sound like those of a raving lunatic, but as part of the Bayley-Murdoch story, they are in keeping with the couple’s rather unconventional relationship.

“The more I got to know Iris during the early days of our relationship, the less I understood her. Indeed, I soon began not to want to understand her,” Bayley writes.

With every passing year he and Murdoch “move closer and closer apart”, enjoying the “solitude a deux” of marriage. They acknowledge and embrace each other’s differences, at times simply by keeping a distance and allowing a particular peculiarity or foible to flourish, free of comment and scrutiny. He is unperturbed by his inability to understand many of his wife’s inner thoughts. That he is granted the privilege of observing this enigmatic person at close range is alone a source of delight and, rather than feel alienated by her occasional remoteness, he draws strength from it, rejoicing in her mystery.

Later, during the height of Murdoch’s illness, this ability to accept without irritation and frustration the gap between their conscious states stands Bayley in good stead, not that he is never distressed or angered by Murdoch’s symptoms. Bayley relates the instances when he loses his temper and shouts at his wife, is verbally cruel, and even punches her arm. He is never defensive, never self-pitying, only matter-of-fact.

The last chapters of Murdoch’s life are, except where it concerns her as an individual, not unique. All of us face the truth they reveal – of life that will, with the passage of time, never mind the onset of sickness, be stripped of dignity, independence and comfort. We should be so lucky if, as in Murdoch’s case, there is someone there to remember us at our brightest, loveliest, most lovable.

Bayley does, and as much as he steers his tale unflinchingly through the darkest episodes of his wife’s life, he recounts humorously and with great enthusiasm and tenderness the good times, including the happy, peaceful moments the pair share because of, rather than in spite of, Alzheimer’s – watching Teletubbies together, reciting bits of doggerel to one another, Bayley typing in bed while Murdoch sleeps deeply beside him.

She was a beloved wife and this fact, as this book as well as a later one, Iris And Friends (Abacus), seem to show, remains unchanged despite her death.

Chilled to the Bone

From StarTwo.

Review by DAPHNE LEE

CITY OF BONES

By Michael Connelly

Publisher: Orion, 448 pages

(ISBN: 978-0446611619)

IN THE early hours of New Year's Day, detective Harry Bosch is asked to look into the discovery of what appears to be the arm bone of a child. Bosch is sceptical. However, further investigation not only confirms that the bone is a child's; it unearths more bones, scattered in a shallow grave near a residential area. What's more, the remains, which appear to have been interred for at least 20 years, bear the marks of long-term physical abuse.Bosch is assigned the case and attacks it with his usual sense of doom. This guy has a past – as fans of Connelly's other books about the Los Angeles Police Department veteran know – and it shows. In this instance, the taciturn cop is reminded of his own, troubled childhood – Bosch was an orphan, spent his adolescence in a series of foster homes and knows just how unfriendly life can be to an unwanted child. His latest investigation hits close to home, and the search for the killer of the abused boy seems like an opportunity to heal old wounds and settle personal scores.

For all the angst of its central character, City Of Bones views its subject matter with a cold objectivity befitting the genre. In the character of Bosch, the line between problematic cop and no-nonsense lawman is a thin and blurry one, but even a maverick with a nose for trouble is subject to rules of conduct and departmental red tape.

For those who enjoy the technical side of police work, Connelly's previous experience as a crime beat journalist for the Los Angeles Times enables him to deliver accurate details of criminal investigation procedure and protocol, as well as portray, with gritty realism, the intricacies of inter-department politics and its ability to help or hinder the handling of a case.

Nonetheless, Connelly's main strength is to give official policy a human face and he does this by creating characters that are strongly drawn, skilfully fleshed out individuals who are, believably, thinking, feeling parts of the system and not just its fictional puppets.

Connelly's body of work will appeal to anyone who enjoys true-crime non-fiction and also appreciates the beauty of multi-faceted characters that would hold their own in stories totally unrelated to the ones they were actually written for.

City Of Bones features several fascinating creations, notably Julia Brasher, Bosch's enigmatic new love-interest; Paul Guyot, the lonely retired doctor whose dog found the buried bone; and Nicholas Trent, the murder suspect whose unsavoury history leads, unexpectedly, to the salvation of others.

These characters help keep the story moving; they capture the reader's interest and imagination so that you race through the book not only to discover the identity of the killer, but also to learn more about the others involved in the case. Even if you are the sort who likes maximum action and minimum reflection, you will find the writing consistently taut and fast-paced, with short chapters, snappy, realistically-phrased conversations, and to-the-point descriptive passages.

There are times when Connelly lets you into Bosch's mind, but you are more often looking over his shoulder as he makes his moves, advances and retreats, trips up or gets thrown a loop. By and large, Bosch is one step ahead of the reader. Nevertheless, the conclusion, case-wise, isn't exactly a huge surprise, and neither is the decision Bosch makes at the book's end.

If you've been following his career over eight or so titles, you'll agree it's a natural progression that makes perfect sense. But if this is your first Bosch novel, well at least you have seven others to look forward (or backward) to.

Redemptive Fiction

From StarTwo.

Review by DAPHNE LEE

ATONEMENT

By Ian McEwan

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 388

(ISBN: 978-0224062527)

THE novel begins with the description of a child's bedroom. It is ''the only tidy upstairs room in the house''. Its owner, Briony Tallis, is an almost obsessively secretive and orderly child. Her need to organise, her desire to invest a meaning, purpose, function and station to everything is seen in the neatness of her surroundings: every thing is in its place and there's a place for every thing. Soon, you think, she will apply this belief to her dealings with people. But not yet. At 13, living in near-seclusion on the family estate, Briony's social interactions are limited to those with her family members who treat the baby of the house with indulgence, affection and condescension. This frustrates the girl, who sees only too clearly how ridiculous she may appear, with her locked drawers and secret codes, keeping hidden things that no one is the least curious about.

Feeling a lack control over her own appallingly mundane existence and faced with the awkwardness and uncertainty of approaching adolescence, she turns to writing stories, retreating into make-believe worlds where incredible and awful things happen with almost clockwork regularity and lives can be reduced, organised and summed up within a neat paragraph or two.

One such work of fiction is The Trials Of Arabella, a play that Briony hopes to stage as a welcome to her beloved older brother, Leon. His holiday at home (he works in a bank in London) coincides propitiously with the arrival of the children of Mrs Tallis's wayward sister, Hermione.

The sexually-aware, manipulative Lola and her boisterous but insecure twin brothers, Jackson and Pierrot, have been dumped indefinitely with the Tallis' by their warring parents. Briony ignores the circumstances of her cousins' presence in her home, withholding sympathy and choosing to use them merely to help impress Leon. What she does not anticipate is Lola emotionally blackmailing her way into the leading role and the twins proving to be belligerent, reluctant and wooden actors. With this inauspicious beginning, Briony's play has every chance of failing.

The Trials Of Arabella is a melodrama which begins tragically with a duped woman, but ends happily, with a wedding. Every action and emotion in it is extreme, blown out of all proportion but, all the same, grounded in the reality of Briony's thoughts and feelings.

Writers like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis felt that all fiction is a version of fact and storytellers are sub-creators, retelling versions of an ultimate truth created by God, the master storyteller. They also believed that all stories already exist and are merely waiting to be written and it is the writer's experience, imagination and inspiration that determine how close the finished product succeeds in resembling its original truth. If this is indeed so, The Trials Of Arabella may be seen as a version of an original story entitled The Trials Of Briony; it may even be prophetic in its themes of false appearances, second chances and redemption. Some may also see the collapse of the play as hinting at Briony's ultimate failure in life.

Does Briony fail? On that morning in the summer of 1935, when she wakes full of anticipation of the success of her play and the resulting love and admiration of her brother, life is bright with potential and promise, and there can be no suspicion of the trouble that will soon follow.

Later the same day she witnesses a scene that she profoundly misunderstands. It changes her without her realising it. If anything, Briony, at this point, views her blameless life with some distaste. Later, when her imagination gets the better of her and is transformed from a means of escape to a stumbling block and a trap, she will wish desperately and ineffectually for a return of ignorance and innocence. And for much of her adulthood, Briony will attempt, with strangely dispassionate doggedness, to make amends for her sins.

By then, both the reader and Briony will realise that her fate is irretrievably bound with her imagination and her writing. The former proves to be her undoing, but, in conjunction with the latter, it may also be the only hope for salvation – her own as well as others'.

Briony's actions as an uncomprehending child affect the lives of all concerned. Especially altered is the future of two people: Briony's older sister, Cecilia, newly down from Cambridge, restless and unsure of her next move; and Robbie Turner, Cecilia's childhood friend who is also the son of the Tallis' charlady. He and Cecilia are at Cambridge at the same time, but their easy friendship does not survive university. There is inexplicable tension between them now.

Cecilia suspects she is being mocked. Robbie thinks she despises him. We soon learn that the reason for this unease is a desire and love for each other, suppressed, denied and overlooked in deference to good manners, social position and self-doubt. When the truth is revealed, their joy is overwhelming, but short-lived.

Atonement, although it may not at first strike the reader as such, is a love story. At its centre is a couple whose love for each other is both a source of pain and hope. The relationship, in itself pure and sustaining, is stained by bad memories and bad faith, and feeds on desperation and deprivation.

It is a heartbreaking love affair, described with compassion and passion, powerfully affecting in its realistically mundane detail, firing the reader's own imagination, provoking feelings of tenderness, making him care intensely about the fate of the pair.

Ian McEwan, who is somewhat of a stylistic chameleon, has produced a book that, through its combination of writing styles, brilliantly succeeds in conveying the idea of art imitating life. Not wanting to give too much away, I will just say that there are two novelists and a myriad of influences at work on this highly literary, absolutely serious work of fiction.

Each serves his/its purpose – setting a scene, creating and/or sustaining a mood, painting a character and making him real, asking questions (most interestingly about the nature of forgiveness and the power of the written word) and suggesting, but never giving, absolute answers.

Can a novelist be trusted to tell the truth? Does his omniscience aid or hinder his objectivity? Can he be both honest and fair? Should he use his book to air his beliefs and doubts; to score a point; settle a score; and even to make amends? And should he be excused for sacrificing accuracy in favour of dramatic effect and vice versa?

Atonement was nominated for last year's Booker Prize, but did not win. However, many would consider it worthier of the award than McEwan's 1998 winner, Amsterdam.

While the latter is an amusing and entertaining black comedy that you can finish in a couple of hours and thereafter forget forever, Atonement begs to be re-read, remembered and considered. If you have time for only one book by McEwan and you want to be moved and made to think, this should be it.