A Severed Head, The Black Prince, The Sea, The Sea [Import] [Paperback]

Iris Murdoch (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Book Of The Month Club; New Ed edition (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099283999
• ISBN-13: 978-0099283997
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1.1 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,756,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919 of Anglo-Irish parents. She went to Badminton School, Bristol, and read classics at Somerville College, Oxford. In 1948 she returned to Oxford where she became a fellow of St Anne's college.

Her first published novel, Under the Net, was selected in 2001 by the editorial board of the American Modern Library as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Awarded the CBE in 1976, Iris Murdoch was made a DBE in the 1987 New Year's Honours List. She died in February 1999.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid meditations on love and death, November 28, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Black Prince (Paperback)

"The Black Prince" is my favorite novel, and I can recommend it unreservedly for its vivid characters, for its complexity, its wit, its drama, for its analysis of human failings and triumphs, loves and hates, and for its prose, which is ecstatic, biting, and brilliant. The ambiguously romantic Black Prince of the title, Bradley Pearson, is an aged bachelor, whose range of somewhat histrionic emotions involves the serene Rachel Baffin, her confused daughter Julian, Rachel's novelist husband Arnold, Bradley's rival in so many ways, Bradley's dysfunctional sister Priscilla, and Bradley's prying ex-wife Christian, who holds the possibility of solace and redemption. In amongst this tangled web they weave Bradley "meditates" on art and metaphysics, sleeping and waking, life and death. Iris Murdoch is the English authoress of a score of popular novels. Unlike the submissions of most writers who attempt to be popular, Ms. Murdoch's elegant fictions are literature, and are also aspirants to the semi-mythical realm of "art". And what is "art"? Is it not, in at least its principle manifestation, great entertainment? And I would assert that the greatness of the entertainment depends mightily upon the reader. I know a man who thinks, and says, that all of Iris Murdoch's books are alike. Very well. Emotional response is surely the beginning of literary criticism (otherwise why bother reviewing this book, or that one?). I identified with Bradley Pearson for several years of my life, and was jubilant that he lived in a world of funny, thoughtful, intensely interesting people, most of whom were not relatives. "Morality" (I put this fragile word between quotation marks because it is so often misused) is intimate to the Murdoch view of things, and the "eternal verities" are influential, even numinous, to all of her characters, including the thoughtless ones. Love, as a unifying force, is awake and vibrant. Beauty is our glimpse of the Godhead. Truth is a paradise into which we may freely pass, if only we have the desire to do so. Justice is as intimate as self-condemnation and as ruthless as violence. Abstractions, in the world of Iris Murdoch's characters, dissolve into human emotions that clarify the world and link us in splendid ways to other human animals. "The Black Prince" is a celebration of our ambiguous and splendid emotions. [November 28, 1996]

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars And Funny, Too., February 8, 2005

By 

Christine Menendez (St. Andreu de Llavaneres, Barcelona Spain) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Black Prince (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Just adding to the plethora of reviews and putting in my two or three cents. Dame Iris is said to have possessed a prodigious and heavy intellect. And one can see, in reading her works, that this is very true. She is able to see into all the various emotional responses of myriad characters, and to do so faultlessly. Yes, we say, this is true! This is the way he would think and act (or the way I would think and act.) She is mercilessly honest in her descriptions, whether they be of thoughts or actions. And I found the book very humorous. Our hero, Bradley, is himself a humorous character, so serious and caught up in himself. He is a buffoon who constantly makes the wrong choices, yet intellectualizes everything and rationalizes everything to suit himself. I think this is quite an amazing book. As one reviewer who didn't like the book remarked, it is a farce. And yes, it is a farce. But there are nonetheless deep truths running around in here. Dame Iris had this incredible ability to see through people, to put herself in their places and understand just what they would do in any given circumstance. Her characters are so impeccably drawn that we know them utterly.
To be able to weave a good story is one thing, that makes a good story-teller. To be able to create characters which live and breathe is yet another thing, and many writers base their works on this alone. But to be able to write impeccably precise prose , create living characters, tell a great story, and have a moral imperative is what makes great literature.
The Black Prince is worth a read. This is great literature, and a whole lot easier than all those Russian guys.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Engaging, April 10, 2004

By 

J. Jacobs - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Black Prince (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

The Black Prince tells the story of Bradley Pearson, an aging writer with few publishing credits to his name. He feels a masterpiece within him, but finds his efforts to focus on his work thwarted by pressures from the women in his life: his sister, his ex-wife, and his best friend's wife and daughter. Murdoch introduces Pearson as a reserved, self-indulged, and solitary man, committed to producing his life's masterpiece and averse to involve himself in others personal affairs. Reluctantly, he comes to the aid of those who seek him out each time he tries to depart for a quiet space in the countryside, further delaying the creation of his masterpiece.

The story starts out slowly. Pearson's self-absorption and righteousness do not inspire the reader's sympathy nor do the other characters, who privately abuse, cheat, or wish death upon their loved ones while maintaining respectable public appearances. Murdoch intersperses this introduction to the dual-natured main characters and their immediate crises with a great deal of philosophy about the nature of love, art and truth. These issues were Murdoch's passion as a philosopher, but the frequency with which she raises such difficult questions detracts from the story line.

Midway through the book, the pace picks up rapidly. Murdoch successfully involves the reader in the passion -- referred to as the black Eros -- that could awaken Pearson's creativity, causing lasting consequences and turning the relations between English intellectuals into a literary thriller. Murdoch twists and turns the story in a way that makes the reader care for and even sympathize with each character as they struggle with aspects of love and human emotion. The narrative journey encompasses lust, violence, psychosis and adultery, as well as youth, vitality, trust and new beginnings. Combining murder, love and the relationships among a small group of aging Englishmen and women, Murdoch infuses psychological and philosophical tension into a classic tale of love and murder.

Cutting down on the amount of philosophizing would have strengthened the story line. But despite Murdoch's refusal to allow editing of her work, The Black Prince made the shortlist for the Booker Prize. A timeless story that unravels timeless emotions, The Black Prince grips the reader with its surprising finale and the talons of Murdoch's writing.