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Iris Murdoch

The Time of the Angels Paperback – January 1, 1988

by Iris Murdoch (Author)

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Carel Fisher is a priest who is experiencing doubt and beginning to feel hate for God. The novel explores the forces of good and evil, and studies a religious man transferring his faith from one force to the other. This Collected Edition is published to honour Iris Murdoch's 70th birthday.

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Viking Pr
Publication date

January 1, 1988
Dimensions

5.25 x 0.75 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

014002848X
ISBN-13

978-0140028485
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking Pr (January 1, 1988)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 014002848X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140028485
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.75 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,168,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #489,763 in Literature & Fiction (Books)

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43 ratings

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Iris Murdoch

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Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) was one of the most influential British writers of the twentieth century. She was awarded the 1978 Booker Prize for The Sea, The Sea, won the Royal Society Literary Award in 1987, and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 by Queen Elizabeth. Her final years were clouded by a long struggle with Alzheimer's before her passing in 1999.

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5 star		55%
4 star		22%
3 star		10%
2 star		9%
1 star		4%

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w. c. manson

Teeters on the brink of unintentional, Gothic-horror parody

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 26, 2021

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We enter into a thickly applied, sinister-Gothic "atmosphere": relentless darkness and fog, isolation in a remote Rectory, a reclusive priest-turned-diabolist. The situation is absurd, the characters stilted and unconvincing, and the pseudo-philosophical musings about godless amoralism both trite and pretentious (complete with a dash of Heidegger). In this 1966 novel, Murdoch's style is flat and pedestrian, with pointless dialogue about meaningless, interpersonal "intrigues." (By contrast, a dozen years later she was able to skillfully bring-to-life colorful characters and lively-realistic dialogue--in "The Sea, the Sea.")

One person found this helpful

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Karen Trollinger

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 11, 2018

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I've wanted this book for years and was not disappointed when I finally was able to read it. The characters, philosophy, dialogue, everything is interesting. A good read. I'm a big Murdoch fan.

One person found this helpful

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eagle eye

If you haven't read Iris Murdoch before

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 28, 2013

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don't choose this one. It is very spare, the main character, Carel, hardly appears, there is some fairly rough stuff even for the times about a "colored" servant who is not really even treated by the author as a complete human being. The magic and the mystery and the search for the good along with, as my grandmother said 'everyone jumping into bed with everyone' is just not there. I find Murdoch to be one the most substantial and rewarding writers I ever read. She's a great 20th century novelist, and one of the few who will live on. This is just not one of her good writing moments.

8 people found this helpful

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M. Buzalka

A House Divided Against Itself...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 4, 2015

One of Iris Murdoch’s best, if least known, novels, The Time of the Angels (1966) rehearses and perfects some of the themes she had been exploring in her previous books, including the immured beauty (The Unicorn), epidemic unrequited love (An Unofficial Rose, The Italian Girl) and the controlling outsized personality (The Flight From the Enchanter).

Set in the claustrophobic environment of a somewhat isolated rectory during a fog and snow bound winter period, it involves a small set of principal characters living in the household of reclusive but still domineering Anglican priest Carel Fisher. They include the widower Carel’s daughter Muriel, his niece and ward Elizabeth, the bi-racial housekeeper Pattie, live-in servant Eugene, a Russian emigre and also a widower, and Eugene’s son Leo.

Using this almost hermetically sealed cast of characters (a few outside visitors do occasionally intrude, primarily Carel’s brother Marcus) and their secrets and desires, Murdoch constructs a compelling story of intersecting and cross purposes, telling the tale primarily from the points of view of Muriel and Pattie and occasionally Eugene, Leo and Marcus but—critically—never Carel or Elizabeth, who maintain tremendous influence over the other characters in the household seemingly without effort.

The story is interesting enough through its first three quarters or so (I’ll decline to give any spoilers because it really is a great read), and one gets the distinct impression that Murdoch is setting up a big finish as the various plot strands play out. If so, one is not disappointed as there are a number of shocker revelations and developments that, while skirting melodrama, are undoubtedly effective and perfectly cap the story’s dramatic arc.

This is one of Iris Murdoch’s best novels and it’s a shame it is also one of her least known, judging by the paltry number of reviews here on Amazon. By all means, if you are at all interested in Murdoch, The Time of the Angels is a must-read.

10 people found this helpful

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Jay Dickson

One of Murdoch's best--and darkest

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 5, 2006

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.

11 people found this helpful

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C. Collins

As wierd a novel as you will read this year

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 28, 2005

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!

7 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Adrian Bailey

More of Murdoch's wicked sense of humour...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 8, 2022

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Many layered, not to be taken as naturalistic. A few vague spoilers below, but nothing to spoil your reading. The whole novel is about spoiled lives, a mad painting of the poisons we take to imprison ourselves. More composed of mischievous helpings of genres such as horror, gothic even, with dollops of psychological realism. A haunted house containing the ghosts of the living and the ghosts of the dead, a decaying rectory shrouded in a seemingly endless fog then ice and snow. Within, a cauldron of conflicts, centred around the central character who barely seems to exist: a persistent question is whether this priest who has lost his beliefs is insane, and what that - insanity - may mean. People from this house rarely go out, and people who try to get in are barred at the door. The ripples from the priest at the centre affect and infect the others. At the furthest edges, two characters offer solidity of a sort but their main characteristic is confused inner turmoil about identity. Who is what? And, equally, what is who? Incest, cruelty, deceit. A sense of 'normality' in a possible outside. Being Murdoch, what is Good? What is True? The brother of the priest, Marcus, is outside trying to get in, intent on re-establishing relationships with a niece with a mysterious illness who smokes cigars and rings a bell for her cousin when she requires company, primarily to do jigsaws, and someone whose progeny and sexual behaviour betoke sicknesses. When Marcus does get in eventually via a coal hole, his brother wallops him which is an event as meaningful to Marcus as Thomas Aquinas' being knocked on the head by a tree branch during a donkey accident. A life-changing event. He abandons his labours to write a book about the ontological argument, convinced his (possibly) mad brother is some sort of unmediated messenger (angel) of Truth. Marcus, who is like a latter day Casaubon from 'Middlemarch', is an object of amused scorn, hopefully to the reader, for his pompous but nugatory intellect. The boil lanced, the darkness blown away, the cold snow melted, hope - goodness - appears in the mundane, ordinary, singing and whistling of workers on a building site who probably know nothing of theories of goodness and philosophical insanities but do thus live life in the light.

Simon Nym

A Real Curate's Egg

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 11, 2016

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There are flashes or brilliance in this book, the quality of Iris Murdoch's writing is very good and it is a pretty deep read, dealing with the topic of morality in a post-faith environment. The framing device of the rectory and its inhabitants works well for the most part, with characters acting as personifications of ideas put forth in the books, as well as other symbolic devices. I have two deep-seated problems in with the book: about half way through I realised I either didn't care about or like any of the characters; the ending is very rushed in my opinion and the characters suddenly seem to develop a collective psychosis and seem hell-bent on mutually assured destruction, also the "big reveal" doesn't come as much of a surprise.

Sisi

More Murdoch magic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 14, 2014

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An Iris Murdoch I hadn't already read- what a treat!
The usual Murdoch mix of mysticism sibling rivalry incest and philosophical discourse.
Iris Murdoch always provides food for thought and certainly leaves me wanting more.

Miss V C Nottingham

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 8, 2015

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fab

Claphamdeary

but on reflection I was probably wrong " By the halfway stage I hated all the characters with a vengence and only finished ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 22, 2014

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Ghastly, endless navel gazing.... pages and pages of mindnumbing "He meant this or maybe it was that .....I think I felt a huge..something ...but on reflection I was probably wrong " By the halfway stage I hated all the characters with a vengence and only finished it through bloody mindedness...if incest, dishonesty, avoidance and denial is your bag then maybe you'll enjoy it. It isn't and I didn't.....

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