Friday, May. 25, 1962

Soap Opera & Sensibility

AN UNOFFICIAL ROSE (344 pp.)--Iris Murdoch--Viking ($4.95).

The scenery is familiar: a grand but now slightly shabby English country house; a London flat admirably fitted for infidelity; serene countryside across which one can hear an epigram drop at 50 paces.' The plot seems unpromising. Will bumbly Sexagenarian Hugh Peronett find Indian summer satisfactory with his renounced ex-mistress Emma now that his wife is dead? Will his caddish son Randall leave his long-suffering wife? And what of sensible, sixtyish Mildred Finch, who has--loved old Hugh from afar for more than 20 years?

Happily, the prestidigitator who presides over all this is Iris Murdoch, a literary magician who can transform a traditional romantic triangle into at least a hexagon at the split of an infinitive. As it turns out, every soul for miles around is both loved and in love--in every combination of age and sex known. But the often unseemly relationships never seem seamy.

Manipulating masterfully, Miss Murdoch turns out a deft three-in-one book: a sort of combined superior soap opera, teddibly British novel of sensibility, and philosophical inquiry into reality.

To-Do over Tintoretto. In so doing. Authoress Murdoch. 42. who in real life is a philosophy professor at Oxford, has denied herself many of the props she resorted to in her earlier novels. Scrapped is the totally grotesque seduction. (Nobody tries to make love in an upturned church bell.) Gone is the really weird character. (In one book, a lady anthropologist expertly brandishes a samurai sword and refers to herself as a severed head.) Except for a knife driven through a doll's heart, one attempted suicide, a to-do over whether old Hugh Peronett should sell his beloved Tintoretto, assorted partings and love scenes, not much happens in An Unofficial Rose.

Creating Connotations. There is nothing straightforward about Iris Murdoch's intentions, however. The mannered maneuverings that bring so little about hold a marvelous suspense as the author reveals a racy richness of motive and confusion. It becomes clear that at the heart of An Unofficial Rose lies a far subtler and thornier question than whether each Jack gets his Jill. In love or out of it, does anyone know the real causes of human action?

Two things, however, should be clear. One: Iris Murdoch is one of the most skillful writers around. Two: if she goes on exploring autumnal amorousness as she has. the word sexagenarian is likely to take on new connotations.

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