The Nice and The Good, by Iris Murdoch
7.0 Stars
5-18-2015

As always, it is a bit of a shock coming back to Murdoch. Her style is so odd in some ways, moving between unprovoked bursts of metaphysics and high-flown desire to a cold blooded evaluation of psychological/social/sexual mechanics. One way to think of her books is as a replay or demonstration of how she thinks these mechanisms work, as well as propaganda (in the best possible way) for various ways in which she thinks people should live. Anyway, I like it. She accurately describes at least some experiences that I'm familiar with, which gives me hope that she is getting other things right, and there are at least a few tidbits in each book that I've taken away and incorporated. Err, what else to say. This story is a sort of Iris-Murdoch-Occult-Noir-Love story? But the focus is never on plot, it is pretty much all on psychology and relationships.