This nicely bound volume contains two
of Murdoch’s works; ‘A Severed Head’ written in 1961, and ‘The Sea, The Sea’,
penned in 1978. While both have male narrators and deal with love affairs, they
are very different in tone.
‘A Severed Head’ is a bedroom
farce, a short work (less than 200 pages) that details a short time in the life
of comfortably well off wine dealer Martin. Martin has both a wife (Antonia)
and a mistress (Georgie). All is well in his world. Then Antonia tells him that
she wants a divorce; she is in love their friend and therapist, Palmer. She
wishes to leave immediately. Palmer and Georgia wish to stay good friends with
Martin, though, which Martin accedes to. It’s all very, very civilized. As the
tale goes it, it turns out that nothing is as it seemed to Martin; people are
coupling up all over the place and with everyone else. Despite his being
cuckolded before he ever strayed, and being jerked around by everyone, I found it
impossible to feel any sympathy for Martin; it’s not far into the story before
he begins hitting people, something he continues to do. No one seems to have a
whole lot of brains, just lust and manners. It’s funny in ways, a satire of
morals and manners.
In ‘The Sea, The Sea’, the narrator is older and single, a
retired actor and director who has bought a remote house on the coast that is
falling into decay. He begins to write a combined memoir and diary, which is
the story we read. Charles Arrowby is over sixty, and is wifeless, childless,
brotherless, sisterless, and well known- although not as well-known as he likes
to think. At his new home, he enjoys swimming in the sea, looking for pretty
rocks, making horrible sounding meals, and fixating on women from his past.
First he lights on Lizzie, who, having given up on Charles, is happily
cohabiting with a gay friend. After he sends her a letter indicating he wants
her back, she is ready to drop her partner. Then he accidently runs into a
woman from even further back in his past: Hartley, the girl he grew up with and
who was his first live, the girl who vanished and never made contact again,
whose mother told Charles she was married and never wanted to see him again.
One contact and he becomes obsessed with her. She admits she’s afraid of her
husband Ben, and that their son ran away to escape him. This convinces him she’s
trapped in an abusive marriage, and he is going to save her. He begins to stalk
her, and eventually kidnaps and imprisons her in his house.
Meanwhile, he is dealing with the plague that everyone who
moves to a holiday-ish locale has to live with: everyone he knows comes to
visit. An old girlfriend, Lizzie and her partner, more old friends, Hartley’s
estranged son, and his cousin James that he hasn’t seen for decades, all come
calling without warning- of course, he doesn’t have a phone. Also, the house
may be haunted. These people allow us to see things through eyes other than
Charles’s; Hartley’s son fills in some of the background of Hartley’s marriage
and Ben’s brutishness, while others see Ben in a very different light.
I had a hard time keeping track of the passage of time in
this novel; Charles seems to exist in an alcohol fueled cloud of obsession.
While the book was interesting, and I couldn’t stop reading it, I really
disliked Charles. He is very much the center of the universe and no one else’s
needs or wants intrude upon his thinking. His friends I have to wonder about,
as they continue to party while being aware of his prisoner. I have to say the ending
surprised me; it seemed tacked on in a way, but though short, it grabbed my
interest in a way parts of the main story didn’t. We are left with the mystery
of who and what Cousin James really was; I would have liked to know more about
him than Charles!
While both stories contain people who act like fools, the
writing is top notch and I enjoyed reading them- ‘The Sea, the Sea’ is some 450
pages long but I read it in a couple of days.
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Haven't read these but I read quite a few books my Murdoch the past.
ReplyDeleteMurdoch is one of my favorite authors. She's one of those, like A.S. Byatt, that I feel too stupid to review, that I shouldn't even *think* about criticizing them because I know I've missed the whole point of the novel!
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