The blurb for this book caught my eye :
When Marian Taylor takes a post as governess at Gaze Castle, a remote house upon a beautiful but desolate coast, she finds herself confronted with a number of weird mysteries and involved in a drama she only partly understands.
Some crime or catastrophe in the past still keeps the house, like the castle of the Sleeping Beauty, under a spell, whose magic also touches the neighbouring house of Riders, inhabited by a scholarly recluse.
Marian’s employer, Hannah, and her retainers, seem to be acting out some tragic pattern: but it is not clear whether Hannah herself, the central figure, the Unicorn, is innocent victim or violent author, saint or witch …In a novel that has all the beauty of a fairy story and the melodrama of a Gothic tale, Murdoch explores the fantasies and ambiguities which beset those who are condemned to be passionately abandoned and yet hopelessly imperfect in their search for God.
If you like theological/philosophical novels or books which attempt to explore some religious or metaphysical idea within a story then you’ll find aspects of Existentialism, moral quandaries, Platonism, repressed and expressed sexuality of all persuasions and vague Christianity within this tiny Gothic “romp”. I was glad that these aspects where covered as they interest me a great deal but I did feel that like the “Matrix” trilogy the ideas were there but unsatisfactorily explored. This, could have been my fault in missing great nuances within the book which I readily accept. One character I appreciated in the book is an old lecturer in the Classics, Max LeJour, who attempts to explain the calamity of the tragic “Unicorn” in Platonic terms. He watches from afar and attempts to interpret and explain her tragedy to the second main protagonist, a former student of his who is dotingly in love with the tragic heroine.
The Gothic landscape was well constructed, based around some areas of Western Ireland, including the Cliffs of Moher; the constant need for bringing gas lamps around the house drew an extremely visual image in my mind of what living in the main isolated house would have been like. There was a lot of whiskey drinking, never mind the start with ale, move to wine then whiskey to finish malarkey, these folk started and finished with the stuff!
The book didn’t keep the intensity it had in the first section as it switches perspective to a different character which, for me, lost its momentum. I can understand that Iris was more interested in what she could explore from the other character’s perspective but I think this exploration detracted from the “thriller” intensity. I’ll not knock her for it but it did nearly cost her a half read book.
I liked the book, I give it 7 out of 10 but I think I liked more what it could have been more than what it was. It caused my grey cells to ponder various ideas but only as a spark rather than as a well rounded argument. It is my first Iris Murdoch read (probably my wife’s favourite author) and I would venture to read more of her, perhaps then I can rethink the theo-philosophical wonderings of the Unicorn and see more than is visible to me now.
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My first Iris Murdoch read was Under the Net (which I still admire and give it 10 out of 10), and I have just finished The Unicorn today when I come across your article. As you say, “I think I liked more what it could have been more than what it was.” I totally agree. The first part is really strong, but as the novel progresses, it seems to start losing its point. For me, the thriller sense is still there, but the idea becomes more and more vague until it exhales completely.