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alisonjfields's review against another edition
4.0
I mostly loved this, but I am a sucker for Murdoch's blend of the sublime and the absurd, the very sad and the very funny.
kyuni's review against another edition
Uno a veces se pregunta qué hacemos con el tema de la moral en tiempos de brocha gorda y luchas descarnadas que deben batirse tan solo por poder dar una bocanada de aire. No hay espacio para poetas ni para poesía porque no hay tiempo para pararse a contemplar lo que nos rodea mientras todo arde. No hay belleza en el dolor, en el sufrimiento, en el miedo o en la supervivencia. Quizás, no lo creo, había otros tiempos preteritos más sencillos para un tipo muy, muy particular de gente y era entonces, allí, donde se podía frenar y pararse a oler las margaritas. Quizás, no lo creo, era un sitio mejor para un grupo muy, muy reducido de gente. No es que esto vaya de eso, pero un poco sí. Por supuesto, la maestra de todo esto nos quiere hablar de Platón y del Amor y la Bondad, como en la mayoría de sus novelas, para que al menos nos podamos pensar desde otra perspectiva y entendamos y comprendamos que todos, absolutamente todos, somo gente aristada y confusa, que emite varias sombras distintas porque estamos siendo enfocados por muchas luces simultaneas, luces que dejan espacio para ciertas sombras. Y es en las sombras donde debemos debatir por nuestra propia supervivencia, por descubrirnos a nosotros mismos qué valoramos y qué importa realmente. Lo siguiente se podría aplicar a todas las novelas después de esta, más o menos: estas novelas tienen un ritmo endiablado, hipnótico y único. La exploración interna tiene su contraparte en los diálogos con otros, aquí siempre un uno contra uno, que les lleva a enfrentarse realmente a aquello que no quieren ver. No hay acotaciones, tan solo un flujo constante de diálogos. Esto genera un extraño trance, donde saltamos entre psiques de personajes y entre los dentros y los fueras de estos, donde los vemos cómo quieren ser y cómo los ven los demás. Aquí hay algo que se desarrollará por mil en otras historias similares, pero quizás un poco más encapsulado, un tanto más reducido a su esencia más directa y sincera - Nos deseamos en los aspectos menos buenos de nosotros mismos.
salmonread's review against another edition
5.0
My first time reading Iris Murdoch. What should I read next?
nlgn's review against another edition
2.0
OK; far from great. Set pieces feel forced (more so than usual) and everyone lacks energy.
bartendm's review against another edition
5.0
What a beautiful novel! The topic seems like it would not be that interesting, but I wanted to read more Iris Murdoch and so thought I would dive into this one. My favorite so far. Bruno and his circle of family and acquaintances all interact in unexpected ways and their relationships by the end of the book have been transformed from the beginning. The characters are interesting and real. She is artful in her foreshadowing and dialogue. Her philosophical bent comes through in an enjoyable manner. I highly recommend this book. I didn't want it to end.
hanvanderhart's review
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
blackoxford's review against another edition
4.0
Now is the Season of Our Discount Tents
Bruno’s Dream is a Shakespearean comedic send up of old age and death. If the Desert Island Disks choice were between Lear and Measure for Measure, I’d go for the Duke not the King. So, I think, would Murdoch. Less pomposity; more grit.
Bruno is in any case Shakespearean as a character. In his eighties, he is not simply a failure, he is an epic failure (as my 11 year old granddaughter would express it). Every one of his important relationships are bust because of, he thinks, trivial faux pas. Like the affair with the gold digger, and the unfortunate racial slur about his daughter-in-law. He’s understanding about those affected who just don’t get what is going on: “Of course they all caused him pain, all the time, they just could not help it.” His regrets are merely that things are past, not that they happened, “The women were all young while he aged like Tithonus” (referencing Midsummer Night’s Dream) No reason for despair though. Better communication can fix things up just fine.
The detail of aged concerns is priceless in Murdoch’s descriptions. For example in Bruno’s preparations for his trip to the toilet:
Bruno’s only interests are stamps and spiders, and he smells, but he has one great end of life desire, “when you’re my age there’s not much left except you want to be loved.” The mystical Puck-like Nigel, who “exists to be imposed upon” is Bruno’s primary caretaker. Nigel is more or less mad but is the only person who is unselfishly devoted to Bruno. Nigel is twin to Will, a handyman/pornographer/actor (‘How absolute the knave is!’ he quotes of himself from Hamlet). The stage is set therefore for some Comedy of Errors, farcical confusion.
Adelaide, the housekeeper, is cousin to the twins and lover of the caddish Danby, Bruno’s son-in-law. Danby is heir presumptive unless Miles, Bruno’s son and unsuccessful poet and middling civil servant, becomes un-estranged. Miles’s wife Diana, the bored middle class housewife, completes the cast. All the characters have “... somehow missed the bus of life.” The plot has its own momentum from this set of relationships.
For Nigel ”real worship involves waiting.” For everyone else there is ritual - in love affairs, personal confession, marital deception, curmudgeonly ire, apology, the resentful anger of loved spurned, all the little set piece battles of English mores. All these rituals are played out in the face of death, imminent or not. “Death contradicts ownership and self. If only one knew that all along,” says one of the cast. And yet "It was a mere convention after all that one ought to be on good terms with one's son or father. Sons and fathers were individuals and should be paid the compliment of being treated as such. Why should they not have the privilege, possessed by other and unrelated persons, of drifting painlessly apart?" If ritual is what constitutes love, can it bring any consolation at all when death is taken seriously?
Ritual and duty have an odd relationship. Duties demand ritual - the male works, the female keeps house; religious obligations are fulfilled through liturgical group actions; condolences are offered through rote ceremonies and phrases; seasonal gifts are exchanged. But it’s as if ritual is required to undermine ritual when duties are to be ignored - the seduction/flirtation game; the routines of civil religion; the legal rituals of divorce. Is love a duty? A mere duty? Does ritual promote or destroy love? My take on Murdoch is that this is her point in Bruno’s Dream. She has some interesting suggestions.
Bruno’s Dream is a Shakespearean comedic send up of old age and death. If the Desert Island Disks choice were between Lear and Measure for Measure, I’d go for the Duke not the King. So, I think, would Murdoch. Less pomposity; more grit.
Bruno is in any case Shakespearean as a character. In his eighties, he is not simply a failure, he is an epic failure (as my 11 year old granddaughter would express it). Every one of his important relationships are bust because of, he thinks, trivial faux pas. Like the affair with the gold digger, and the unfortunate racial slur about his daughter-in-law. He’s understanding about those affected who just don’t get what is going on: “Of course they all caused him pain, all the time, they just could not help it.” His regrets are merely that things are past, not that they happened, “The women were all young while he aged like Tithonus” (referencing Midsummer Night’s Dream) No reason for despair though. Better communication can fix things up just fine.
The detail of aged concerns is priceless in Murdoch’s descriptions. For example in Bruno’s preparations for his trip to the toilet:
“Of course it wasn’t absolutely necessary to put on the dressing gown now that it wasn’t winter any more, but it represented a challenge. It was quite easy, really. The left hand held the bed post while the right lifted down the dressing gown and with the same movement slid itself a little into the right sleeve. The right hand lifted on high, the sleeve runs down the arm. Then the right hand rests flat against the door a little above shoulder height, while the left leaves the bed post and darts into the left-arm hole. If the left is not quick enough the dressing gown falls away toward the floor, hanging from the right shoulder. It then has to be slowly relinquished and left lying. There was no getting anything up off the floor.”My own routine for putting on trousers in the morning is similar.
Bruno’s only interests are stamps and spiders, and he smells, but he has one great end of life desire, “when you’re my age there’s not much left except you want to be loved.” The mystical Puck-like Nigel, who “exists to be imposed upon” is Bruno’s primary caretaker. Nigel is more or less mad but is the only person who is unselfishly devoted to Bruno. Nigel is twin to Will, a handyman/pornographer/actor (‘How absolute the knave is!’ he quotes of himself from Hamlet). The stage is set therefore for some Comedy of Errors, farcical confusion.
Adelaide, the housekeeper, is cousin to the twins and lover of the caddish Danby, Bruno’s son-in-law. Danby is heir presumptive unless Miles, Bruno’s son and unsuccessful poet and middling civil servant, becomes un-estranged. Miles’s wife Diana, the bored middle class housewife, completes the cast. All the characters have “... somehow missed the bus of life.” The plot has its own momentum from this set of relationships.
For Nigel ”real worship involves waiting.” For everyone else there is ritual - in love affairs, personal confession, marital deception, curmudgeonly ire, apology, the resentful anger of loved spurned, all the little set piece battles of English mores. All these rituals are played out in the face of death, imminent or not. “Death contradicts ownership and self. If only one knew that all along,” says one of the cast. And yet "It was a mere convention after all that one ought to be on good terms with one's son or father. Sons and fathers were individuals and should be paid the compliment of being treated as such. Why should they not have the privilege, possessed by other and unrelated persons, of drifting painlessly apart?" If ritual is what constitutes love, can it bring any consolation at all when death is taken seriously?
Ritual and duty have an odd relationship. Duties demand ritual - the male works, the female keeps house; religious obligations are fulfilled through liturgical group actions; condolences are offered through rote ceremonies and phrases; seasonal gifts are exchanged. But it’s as if ritual is required to undermine ritual when duties are to be ignored - the seduction/flirtation game; the routines of civil religion; the legal rituals of divorce. Is love a duty? A mere duty? Does ritual promote or destroy love? My take on Murdoch is that this is her point in Bruno’s Dream. She has some interesting suggestions.
larrys's review
3.0
This is the first Iris Murdoch novel I've read. My history with Iris Murdoch involves watching the film Iris at least twice, and watching my year 13 English teacher read Iris Murdoch all through my senior high school year of English rather than teaching us English. He was obsessed. I picked up an Iris Murdoch novel around that time just to see what he was so interested in, but failed to get anything out of it.
Now that I'm the age my English teacher was then, I can finally get through one. I'm not sure how Bruno's Dream stacks up against the others, or if it was the best place to start, but the introduction to this Vintage edition says that Murdoch's novels are full of partner swapping, so I suppose this one is typical enough.
Now that I'm the age my English teacher was then, I can finally get through one. I'm not sure how Bruno's Dream stacks up against the others, or if it was the best place to start, but the introduction to this Vintage edition says that Murdoch's novels are full of partner swapping, so I suppose this one is typical enough.
idontkaren's review
4.0
I really liked the structure of this--the way the story unfolded through the alternating characters' points of view. There were lots of plot twists that kept me interested throughout. Murdoch fleshed out the characters enough to keep them from falling into stereotypes. Despite this, their eccentric behavior does give the story a soap opera-feel at times--not my favorite thing. But ultimately, I could see where they were coming from and why they were so messed up. Hadn't read Murdoch before this, but I'd be interested in reading more by her.
readerstephen86's review
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Another chilling and clinical look at human emotions through the eyes of novelist-philosopher Iris Murdoch. It is replete with details on the material world, with an extended arachnid-themed metaphor on entrapment (of others, of the self), and a book I can best imagine I'd enjoy as a dissection piece for a literary essay. As fiction it's too glassy-chilled to be entirely enjoyable, nor are the characters entirely believeable. All too often they feel like the red and white chess pieces mentioned in the book, as pawns for Murdoch's dark experimental imaginings. But Murdoch always hits back with some precisely evocative motifs, and does set the mind thinking about the place of love in the world, and if in our self-interested and animal-like relations with one another, there is really anything more.
3/5 as unlike the other 3 Murdoch's I've so far read ('The Nice and the Good'; 'The Black Prince'; and 'The Sea, The Sea'), I can't imagine reading this one again. But I will be reading more Murdoch, even if it means spacing it out with warmer-hearted reads in between.
3/5 as unlike the other 3 Murdoch's I've so far read ('The Nice and the Good'; 'The Black Prince'; and 'The Sea, The Sea'), I can't imagine reading this one again. But I will be reading more Murdoch, even if it means spacing it out with warmer-hearted reads in between.