The Bell

I love Iris Murdoch. I've come to expect certain things from her novels: one astonishing, humorous transition (here, it comes early, on a train); at least 2 abrupt sexually-centered plot twists that make me exclaim out loud on the subway; a few incredible lines that border on philosophy. Most of all, there's the sense in her novels that anything is possible - as the excellent A.S. Byatt interview puts it, she has the instincts of the 19th century novelist, though she's thoroughly contemporary. O [...]

Interrupting RoutineI work as tutor and librarian at Blackfriars Hall Oxford, the smallest and most medieval of the University of Oxford colleges and also a Dominican priory. A few years ago Blackfriars acquired a bell to call the friars to prayer. The sound of the bell does indeed create a definite atmosphere in the place; as also does its timing since it rings, like its larger fellow at Christ Church College, according to solar time - about six minutes behind GMT. The midday call to the Angelu [...]

"There is a story about the bell ringing sometimes in the bottom of the lake, and how if you hear it it portends a death."The Bell is an early philosophical novel by Iris Murdoch, the Irish academic and Oxford professor of Philosophy, who also wrote in total 26 novels. This is her fourth novel, first published in 1958. The first of her novels to be shot through with ethical considerations, The Bell remains the one novel in her entire output where the moral conundrums are the most explicit. Until [...]

Opening lines: Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six month later to return to him for the same reason. The absent Paul, haunting her with letters and telephone bells and imagined footsteps on the stairs had begun to be the greater torment. Dora suffered from guilt, and with guilt came fear. She decided at last that the persecution of his presence was to be preferred to the persecution of his absences.Well, colour me intrigued by this passage and thrilled [...]

"There were many people who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are a kind of sick people, whose desire for God makes them unsatisfactory citizens of an ordinary life, but whose strength or temperament fails them to surrender the world completely; and present-day society, with its hurried pace and its mechanical and technical structure, offers no home to these unhappy souls. Work, as it now is can rarely offer satisfaction to the half-contemplative."In The Bell, we find such a grou [...]

he felt himself to be one of them, who can live neither in the world nor out of it. In 1950s England it was illegal to be homosexual. In this novel it’s 1950s England and Michael is homosexual. He’s created a mysterious religious community nestled away in the secluded woods which also serves as storage space for his desires. But you really can’t hide from who you are, can you? And Dora, a young woman unhappily married to an older man, also starts to figure out that this kind of repression [...]

Several characters come to a lay community attached to a Benedictine nunnery. It is a place of sanctuary, a bridge between the secular world outside and the closed, contemplative, spiritual convent. Most of the characters are looking for some kind of peace, although not all of them find it. This novel is widely regarded as Murdoch's masterpiece. I have not read all of her books, but this one is excellent.

There were many people, she said, and Michael was but too ready to credit her since he felt himself to be one of them, who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are a kind of sick people, whose desire for God makes them unsatisfactory citizens of an ordinary life, but whose strength or temperament fails them to surrender the world completely; and present-day society, with its hurried pace and its mechanical and technical structure, offers no home to these unhappy souls.The voice of t [...]

this book is so good. so so good. it is one of those books of which i ask myself, how did she do it? how did she come up with a story like this? what tremendous formal control does it take to write such a seemingly simple story and pack it with so much stuff?the beginning is a bit Middlemarchian, in that a rather naive girl marries an older man who is passionate about his scholarship (we never learn whether his scholarship is any good) and also tremendously narcissistic, manipulative, and abusiv [...]

I really don't know why so many people like The Bell when Murdoch has written better books? I find the Bell cumbersome and lacking soul. Sure the characters are ok, but Murdoch became better at creating fully fledged people AND mixed in philosophy at the same time. The story is about a group of rather nasty people who go on a retreat at an abbey but are entangled in each other's lives with the bell being the focal part of their lives and possibly their redemption from being materialistic and hav [...]

This was the first Iris Murdoch novel I read, many years ago now, and straight away I was hooked. For months afterwards I was obsessed with her books, and read them one after the other. Her appeal is both simple and complex. Murdoch is a great storyteller, a brilliant inventor of plots. Typically, her stories start out like realistic novels of English life, only to become increasingly bizarre, with outrageous entanglements of relationship and motive, recognitions, reversals, melodramatic confron [...]

I added this book to my to-read shelf because of this article:theguardian/books/boo

Iris Murdoch's fourth novel shows a strengthening of fictional power while continuing her philosophical inspection of human character. I love the opening lines: "Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason." Dora is one of the two main characters and represents the amoral personality. She is a fairly young woman, married to an older man. While living mainly on nerves and feelings, she has a horror of any sort o [...]

Another amazing book from Iris Murdoch. She managed once more to bring up some questions about types of behaviour in this life, in a very londonese-like spirit, gently uncovering mysteries of human nature.

It was just that Dora had then estimated, with a devastating exactness which was usually alien to her, how much of sheer contempt there was in Paul's love; and always would be, she reflected, since she had few illusions about her ability to change herself. It did not occur to her to wonder if Paul might change, or indeed into hope from him anything at all. She felt his contempt as destructive of her, and his love, consequently unwelcome. Yet all the time, in a shy and round about way, she loved [...]

whenever i pick up an iris murdoch novel, it seems initially that i am embarking on a tale with conventional romance trappings, and then, very quickly, there is a moment of unease, and i begin to understand that she has lured me away from the safe harbour where her story begins, and that the universe her characters inhabit might be familiar to me but that i am not conversant with its rules. the bell was no exception: at first it seemed that the primary story would be that of dora, the desultory [...]

Religious community life: tension, spirituality, suppressed sexuality, practicality. Less overtly philosophical than Under the Net.The Guardian selected it as a book to give you hope:theguardian/books/boo

I like Murdoch, she writes without inhibitions about such subjects as morality, sex and religions. The Bell has a special charm, combining the three subjects mentioned before. I really liked the way she portrays her characters, Michael, Dora and Nick, who, without any specific reason, became my favorite character.***imi place iris murdoch. scrie frumos, captivant si fara rezerve, neevitind subiecte precum moralitatea, sexualitatea si viata religioasa. clopotul e primul roman scris de ea pe care- [...]

لا اتذكر في أي فلم كان ذلك المشهد حينما تتحدث احدى الشخصيات عن اعجابها بالرواية التي تقرأها حاليا كونها تتحدث عن فتاة تنسى كل شيء لتلاحق فراشة في الحافلة او القطار لا اتذكر. يومها ظلت هذه الجملة ترن في أذني و تمنيت حقاً معرفة اسم هذه الرواية و لم أدري ان الصدف تخبئها لي بكرم با [...]

Wow. This is a short novel about passion, devotion, betrayal, and the strictures of society and religion. There's a frenetic energy and Iris Murdoch does not allow for many lulls in the narrative--she turns from character to character to propel the plot to a thrilling trajectory. Like The Sea, The Sea, some of the characters are magnified in scope beyond what would be realistic. But that heightened focus does not detract. This would be a good bookclub pick. I'm having a splendid start to the rea [...]

(Last of my "catch-up" reviews for stuff I read between June and October) It is basically a Murdoch novel, a bunch of characters experience spiritual dramas, there is light and easily penetrable symbolism, lots of great sentences and love stories. I generally love everything she wrote and this did not disappoint, though it is by no means her best work - contrary to what I was told. It is a bit like The Nice and the Good though a bit more ascetic. Which can be a good thing for some but not for me [...]

I think we all thought Murdoch would be difficult, intellectual. In fact, she is funny, perceptive and very easy to read. Despite the setting of this book (1950s, a lay community) and its characters (very middle class British) I found the book compelling. Written largely from the point of view of three of the characters (Dora, Michael and Toby), the language itself conveys the personalities and failings of the characters. Her handling of male homosexuality is very sensitive and believable - even [...]

A classic piece of literature. It's almost 5 stars but I think it will take a re-reading to get to 5-start status. Iris Murdoch had me at hello. The book starts with these lines:"Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason."The story is set in 1950's England but could have happened today. The Bell about a group of dysfunctional people (which means they are just like you and me) who live together in a small comm [...]

Three and a half stars. Thought about giving it 4 stars, but was left with too many questions on what motivated/drove some characters to their endunsatisfying for me. However, if you appreciate truly creative writing, then this is worth the read for that aspect alone. Here's an example:"Toby, as a Londoner, was not used to moonlight, and marvelled at this light which is no light, which calls up sights like ghosts, and whose strength is seen only in the sharpness of cast shadows."

Having for an introduction to Murdoch such a stolidly and rigidified work as The Italian Girl and subsequently and significantly losing interest in the author’s fiction, I have to wonder what changed in the meantime that had me so enthralled by this book even before I picked it up. As becomes immediately apparent, and more so as the book goes on, The Bell is a stirred and uncaged being offered up as a dedicated pupil of Murdoch’s multifarious notions and concerns.Though Iris believed in the [...]

Whenever books find their way into our discussions, my friend rarely misses the opportunity to point out how time-consuming reading is, since the same amount of information you gather from tens of pages of description can be visually assimilated from a movie in seconds. This popped into my head more than once while I was reading The Bell and made me painfully aware of the time lost, which is why I have such difficulty settling on a rating. One aspect of the novel that I really liked is that ther [...]

This is an interesting book. There's is much to appreciate about bells. The characters are distinctly individualistic, which causes them to be sometimes reserved with their feelings. The story centers on a new lay community, situated in a wood of birds and next to a walled, cloistered Abbey of nuns. The history of this outpost dates to medieval times; the muddy, plant-tangled, still lake bears evidence of those olden days in a lost bell and a legend, which predates the dissolution of the monaste [...]

Dora Greenfield is a young woman, married to the bullying, supercilious Paul who is thirteen years her senior. She has been separated from him for six months before deciding to go back to him when he invites her to join him at Imber Abbey where he is working on some ancient manuscripts. The Abbey is home to an order of cloistered nuns and has a small lay religious community attached, living in a stately home. The community has a wide range of members from the self appointed leader Michael, aspir [...]

I finish this book satisfied with what has come before and filled with the echoes of the emotional bouts that these happenings, and the characters that caused them, inspired. This is truly a novel in the sense that it proposes characters with complicated personalities and motivations, and sets their struggles and joys against portions of society that, in turn, contribute to the overall drama. It is an excellent novel for its prose, which is such a pleasure to read; for its structure, which balan [...]

Character-driven, elegantly written story of secrets, betrayal and guilt. Full review to follow