Friday, December 25, 2009

The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch

I'm a bit conflicted.  It was a good book.  Really and thoroughly good.  It did many wonderful things; working simple discussions of ideas into the plot; fleshing out these ideas through the actions taking place in the plot; mixing a hint of fantasy and unreality in with a cool, clear view of the world.

However, at some level it didn't pass muster.  The language was adroit, apt, everywhere clear and enjoyable, but lacked a certain sparkle.  It wasn't phenomenal.  Most of all, somehow despite the fact that the book did such a good job of wedding the extraordinary with the banal, the realm of absolute morality with a very familiar day-to-day, I felt that it never quite took flight.  There was something heavily earthbound about it.

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