Customer Reviews

The Time of the Angels (The collected works of Iris Murdoch)

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THE TIME OF THE ANGELS is not one of Murdoch's best-known novels, but it is one of her best and most disturbing. Concentrated largely in a London rectory for a church bombed to smithereens during the last war, the novel is concerend, appropriately enough, with the ways in which people can act in the absence of God. The action of the novel--and much of the character's concerns--revolve upon the strange new rector of the church, Carel, who refuses to see anyone other than his daughter, his ward, and his servants in his new station, and who never leaves the house: the novel creates a wonderfully claustrophic atmosphere within the rectory that seems to anticipate that in the toymaker's house in Angela Carter's subsequent little masterpiece THE MAGIC TOYSHOP. (The hazy wintertime in the London streets of Murdoch's novel also act beautifully to counteract the overheated atmosphere inside the rectory.) Although the novel does not end up with as high a body count as some of Murdoch's other works (such as the Jacobean Gothic THE UNICORN), its concluding events are incredibly bleak--though lightened by some final touches of Murdochian humor.

This is certainly a wierd story. A dominating, rude, destructive Anglican Priest has become an atheist preaching wild sermons to his disturbed and dissappearing parrishoners. Yet his dominance and control keep a solor system of lesser weakling personalities tied to him. Carel's behavior throughout the book is destructive yet his apologist daughter, Muriel, keeps making excuses for him, even when she finds that her invalid cousin, Elizabeth, is actually her father's illegitimate daughter with his sister-in-law and he is having sex with this young sickly woman that he knows is his daughter.

The parrish and parsonage are full of hidden passages and peep holes so that everyone can spy on Carel's misdeeds.

His brother Marcus continues to make contact with Carel, continually is rebuffed, and then thinks he is enlightened by this process by the wise older brother, Carel, who actually could care less whether his younger brother lives or dies.

Interestingly, there is a beautiful young amoral Russian boy, Leo, living in the parsonage with his father,who is just as amoral and is also forgiven because of his youth and beauty. I found it interesting that Murdoch would have the read be repulsed by the older Carel yet forgive the younger Leo, when they are both birds of a feather.

What an odd book!