A review by jaina8851
The Bell by Iris Murdoch

reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

What an absolutely fascinating read. This is definitely the sort of book that I wish I could read in the context of an English seminar or something, where I could have a discussion led by a professor to dig into everything and provide context about the story. One thing that really stood out to me is that for a story that was written nearly 60 years ago, I found the characters and their struggles surprisingly relatable. Which I suppose in some ways feels like a silly thing to say, since people are people across all time periods, but it felt like a really interesting tension between how much has changed since 1958 and how much could have been written today. I really didn't know anything about this book before getting started with it and I assumed it would mostly focus on Dora, so I was pleasantly surprised when it started branching out into deep POVs with the other main characters of the story. It felt like a precursor to one of my favorite genres of books, "slow moving character studies", until about 70% of the way through where everything all came together very quickly and chaotically. There was one chapter at that point where I swear I heard yakkety sax playing in my head as the comedy (tragedy?) of errors all played out in very rapid succession. The ending left me feeling very reflective. My book club read this a long time before I joined, but I really wish I had been somehow been present for the conversation about it because I just want to TALK to people about what the heck happened in this book.