Iris Murdoch

The popular impression of Iris Murdoch is riddled with contradictions. Her novels feature dark, irrational passions, working themselves out in unexpected denouments. Her analytical books on philosophy emphasize the importance of finding the right, moral way to live. Her husband John Bayley's memoir of her as an Alzheimer's sufferer showed them both as babes in the woods, somehow able to preserve their innocence in a tainted world. The triumph of this magisterial biography is that all these different aspects are unified into a coherent view, In her youth, Iris was vital and impulsive, sure of her powers of attraction, ready to bond with a new partner soon after any relationship had ended - and there were many. Like a character in one of her own novels, she was drawn to erotic magnetism of a kind that today would be considered dubious - a prime example being her affair with Noble Prize-winning novelist Elias Canetti, an emotional tyrant and manipulator who found it difficult to spend a whole night with a woman. Suddenly, after meeting Oxford Eng. Lit. luminary John Bayley, Iris's life seemed to be purified of such perversions - probably because she loved him so much that she was happy to live by his code. This biography is outstanding in its depth of research, command of complicated evidence and portrayal of social context - the 1940s are especially well done. After the early years of marriage to Bayley, there is a tendency to rely too much on explicating the fiction. The Alzheimer years are sensitively passed over. (Kirkus UK)