Likely Stories: Five Years in the Making

One of the hardest questions for an avid reader is “What’s your favorite book?”  The task is no easier to come up with a list of my favorites over the five years of Likely Stories.  So, I decided to pick two from each reading year.  

2009-10 – Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín.  Tóibín’s prose weaves a serene tale of life in Ireland and Brooklyn, NY.  The main character Eilis matures quickly after her arrival and develops a relationship with a young man she meets at a dance.  Toibin writes lovely prose.  And  Ballistics by Billy Collins.  This collection, by my favorite poet, sparkles with all the wit and humor, which characterizes his poetry.

2010-11 – Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff.  Schiff has written one of the most entertaining biographies I have ever read.  She brings the Queen of the Nile into sharp focus with all her strengths and weaknesses. Also, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.  Another writer with elegant and beautiful prose, which tells the story of a close bond between a loner and a young girl who share a love of books and reading.

2011-12 – The Radetsky March by Joseph Roth.  The thread which ties this list together has emerged: spectacular, beautiful, enchanting prose.  This novel, set during the Napoleonic Wars might not seem interesting, but that would be a mistake on any reader’s part.  Next, The Golden Droplet by Michel Tournier.  This story of a young girl’s search for a woman who took her photograph excites, saddens, and pleases on every page.

2012-13 -- The Red and the Green by Iris Murdoch.  Iris Murdoch is one of my top three authors.  Her novels have large casts of characters with intricate plots.  Nearly every one of her novels is a masterpiece.  And, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.  This first volume in a trilogy covers the life and loves of the Tudor Court of Henry VIII.  This Booker Prize Winner was followed by the same award for part two, Bring Up the Bodies.  Part three is due out sometime in 2015.  I can’t wait.

2013-14 – Now we come to my 5^th year of sharing my love for fine literature with my dedicated and faithful listeners.  I have declared a dead heat between Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84.  Goldfinch is one of the finest novels I have ever read.  Despite its length, it was a fast read – a page turner some might say – about a young man who loses his mother in a terrorist attack, but new friends place him on a much more secure path to adulthood.  This is a must read.  And finally, Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 is another must read.  Again, I urge readers not to allow the length – 933 pages – to deter from reading this fascinating story of two children, who share a secret bond neither of them fully understands.  Twenty years after their single encounter, they search for each other.

--Chiron, 8/21/14

The Red and the Green by Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch has written twenty-six novels. She also has written five plays and five volumes of philosophy and a book of poetry. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the 1978 novel, The Sea, The Sea. I came to read Murdoch after hearing an interview on NPR in 1988 about her newest novel, The Book and the Brotherhood. This novel may be my earliest invocation of the “Rule of 50.”

I started it, but became confused by the mass of characters and background detail. I put it aside for another day. Shortly after, I found myself laid up for a week, and tried it again. This time I stuck to it, and became enthralled with the power of Murdoch’s prose, her attention to the minutest detail, and the deep, psychological insights of her characters. I immediately set out to gather the rest of her work. I have all of her novels, and since 1988, I have been slowly working my way through them. The Red and the Green, published in 1965, is the thirteenth I have read.

The Red and the Green tells the story of an extended family in the week before the Easter Rising in 1916 Ireland. Andrew Chase-White is a protestant and an officer in the British Army. His cousin Pat Dumay, is a Catholic and a member of the Volunteers, a group planning the uprising. These families are tightly woven, and the political situation in Ireland bubbles beneath the surface when the family members meet. The “troubles” appear in the form of petty squabbles.

As in all her novels, she has a large number of characters, and, as is my custom, a family tree helps keep all the cousins, aunts, and uncles in order. Christopher is the widowed father of Frances, who is very close to Andrew Chase-White. They discuss which theater to attend one afternoon. Murdoch writes:

“It was about a half hour later and tea was nearly over. They were sitting round the low wickerwork table in the conservatory, while outside the garden was being caressed or playfully beaten by the light rain which drifted a little in the breeze from the sea. Rain in Ireland always seemed a different substance from English rain, its drops smaller and more numerous. It seemed now to materialize in the air rather than to fall through it, and, transformed into quick-silver, ran shimmering upon the surface of the trees and plants, to fall with a heavier plop from the dejected palms and the chestnut. This rain, this scene, the pattering on the glass, the smell of the porous concrete floor, never entirely dry, the restless sensation of slightly damp cushions, these things set up for Andrew a long arcade of memories. He shifted uneasily in his basket chair, wondering how long it took to develop rheumatism.” (29)

Few novelists can grip me by the heart and soul and transport me to a distant time and place. Murdoch does it to me every time. I think my first encounter caught me unawares of the power of this great 20th century novelist. She died in February 1999 after suffering from Alzheimer’s. A film, starring Judy Dench told the story of her final years. An extremely interesting and detailed biography came out in 2001 by Peter J. Conradi, a friend of Iris’s, who gave him complete access to her journal, letters, and papers.

Iris Murdoch is one of the finest novelists of the 20th century. It has taken me many years to get to The Red and the Green, the halfway point of her novels, but I mean to get through the entire list. I guess then I will have to start over from the beginning. 5 stars

--Chiron, 7/9/12

Something Special by Iris Murdoch

This recently discovered story – apparently from the 1940s – reveals Murdoch’s talent at an earlier stage than most of her novels. The story seems a bit awkward in parts, and does not have that smooth flowing prose of her novels, especially The Bell, The Book and the Brotherhood, and The Green Knight. Nevertheless, as I work my way through her 26 novels (I am about half-way through), I enjoy seeing a slightly different side of one of the 20th century’s great novelists. Michael McCurdy adds interesting illustrations of scenes from the story.

After reading Peter Conradi’s thoroughly detailed biography, I can see some of the young Murdoch and her attitude toward marriage in Yvonne Geary. She does not seem inclined toward marriage, and Sam Goldman does not seem a good fit for the independent minded Yvonne.

A nice slim little book, and only because I am spoiled by the wonderful prose of Murdoch do I give this 4 stars.

--Chiron, 3/13/11

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch

This novel puts me at half way through reading all of Iris Murdoch’s 26 novels. All of her characters are complex and interesting. Her stories are interesting, serious (mostly), poignant, unusual. A Severed Head adds to the mix with brilliant comedy at its drollest. Many times I actually laughed out loud to the consternation of the inevitable cat on my lap.

Martin Lynch-Gibbon runs a successful wine-merchant business. He married a beautiful, charming, sexy woman, Antonia, and he maintains a beautiful, charming, sexy mistress, Georgie. Add to this his best friend, an American psychiatrist, Palmer Anderson and his sister, Honor Klein. Martin’s sister Rosemary plays the role of mother to Martin. I understand Murdoch’s casts of characters much better now that I have read Conradi’s excellent biography.


What could possibly go wrong with this tangled gaggle of free spirits? Everything!

While the novel starts out with a “stiff-upper-lip” British tone, things do fall apart. As we top the hill, and the roller coaster rushes down, shocking and funny events made me read faster and faster all the way to the surprising ending – like the zigzags of the roller coaster for one last thrill as it pulls into the station.

Martin thinks he can have it all without consequences, but demons shadow him at every turn. While her style takes some getting used to, stay with it. Sometimes the beginnings do get confusing, but Murdoch’s marvelous prose will draw the reader deeper and deeper into the plot. Here Martin describes his wife, Antonia:

“Antonia has great tawny-colored intelligent searching eyes and a mobile expressive mouth which is usually twisted into some pout of amusement or tender interest. She is a tall woman; and although always a little inclined to plumpness has been called ‘willowy’, which I take as a reference to her characteristic twisted and unsymmetrical poses. Her face and body are never to be discovered quite in repose.” (17)



If you do not know Iris Murdoch, begin with The Bell, or her Booker Prize winner, The Sea, the Sea, or as I did with one of her last novels, The Book and the Brotherhood. You are in for hundreds of hours of delightful reading.

--Chiron, 5/23/10

Iris Murdoch: Letters and Diaries, 1939-1945 edited and introduced by Peter J. Conradi

After reading Conradi’s exquisite and thoroughly documented biography of Iris Murdoch, I thought I would have little to learn about one of my all time favorite novelists. But these insights -- directly from the pen of Murdoch herself -- reveal much more about her. Even with Conradi’s superb effort, these journals and letters reveal inside information about Iris’ life, loves, relationships, and early life. I hope this is the first in a long series from Conradi.

This volume from England -- not yet published in the US -- will appeal to devotees of Iris and should be must-reading for all serious students of her work.

If you have never read Iris Murdoch, you are missing out on one of the great novelists of the 20th century. She wrote 26 novels as well as a handful of plays, poetry, criticism, and philosophy. Murdoch is truly one of the most outstanding women of letters in the history of British literature. She ranks with Pope and only a smidgen below Dr. Samuel Johnson in my estimation. Start with her Booker Prize winner The Sea, the Sea, or The Bell, or, as I did, The Book and the Brotherhood. I am about half way through her novels, and this has inspired me to read A Severed Head next. 5 stars

--Chiron, 5/16/10

Iris: The Life of Iris Murdoch by Peter J. Conradi

Sometime in 1987, a review of Iris Murdoch’s latest novel, The Book and the Brotherhood, intrigued me. I started to read it, but could not get past the first fifty pages. This was even before the days of the “rule of 50.”

A couple of months later, I was in the hospital for a few days, and I asked my then wife to bring me a couple of books from the table alongside my easy chair. She misheard me, and brought the wrong pile. The only one I had not read was the Murdoch. I decided to give it another try. I was awake all night, finishing it about 8:00 AM the next morning. Since then, I have loved her work, and I am making my way through all of her 26 published novels (about 16 to go!), although after this biography, I see that I missed so much in what I read, I think I will start over and go through all of them in order.

Her novels are complex in characters, plots, relationships, and philosophy, but they are worth every single second I spend with her. From her novels and this biography, I have learned countless new vocabulary words, ideas, historical events, and philosophy. This incredibly detailed and documented biography of the great (-est?) 20th century British novelist does her justice – and then some. There are 60 pages of end notes, 10 pages of selected bibliography organized by chapter, Murdoch’s complete bibliography (5 pages), and an extremely detailed index that runs to 32 pages.

An example of the detail: at one point, Conradi mentions that when World War II broke out, Iris and some friends were evacuated from Oxford, and “Iris was painting a lot; many of her paintings of the time had ladders in them. One survives: a copy of Joyce’s Ulysses – the first UK edition came out in 1936 – lying by a blue pottery jar of coltsfoot” (112). He then endnotes this detail by quoting three letters Iris wrote mentioning the “coltsfoot” growing around the area. I can only presume this is some sort of plant – pity that wasn’t explained in a note! So, to my dictionary, which explained coltsfoot as, “Tussilara farfara, a plant with yellow, daisy-like flowers considered a weed, but used as a cough remedy. Named for the shape of its leaves.” Now, I can truly see that painting.

On another occasion, the author mentions a professor Iris admired, and then he describes photos, hanging in this professor’s office, of his mentors, their names, dates, what and where they taught (118). This was truly a labor of the utmost affection and respect. Conradi was a close friend of Iris and her husband John Bayley.

Much like Murdoch’s novels, there is a lot to absorb here. I have learned so much about her personal life, I know I will have a better understanding of her novels. As I read (or re-read) each novel, I think I will copy the notes from the biography and keep them nearby.

Keep Latin, German, and French dictionaries handy, because not all phrases are translated. Some are explained, some evident from the context with even a smattering of these languages, but I had to puzzle out a least a third of these quotes (usually) from her letters and journals.

This might seem boring and dry, but it is anything but! Iris was a vivacious, funny, brilliant, clever, and popular woman at Oxford in the late 30s, during the war working for the British Treasury Department, at St. Anne’s College in the 50s, and later the Royal College of Art. All this detail comes out in Conradi’s delightful prose. Maybe more that a reader could ever imagine about the life of Murdoch, but if you love her novels as much as I do, it is decidedly NOT too much.

I knew how it would end, since I read John Bayley’s Iris: an Elegy, but I could not help the emotional effect of her loss as I closed the book today. Five stars

--Chiron, 5/17/08