The Bell
Books | Fiction / Classics
3.7
Iris Murdoch
A motley assortment of characters seek peace and salvation in this early masterpiece by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an order of sequestered nuns. A new bell is being installed when suddenly the old bell, a legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. And then things begin to change. Meanwhile the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercises discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved, whatever that may mean. Originally published in 1958, this funny, sad, and moving novel is about religion, sex, and the fight between good and evil.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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More Details:
Author
Iris Murdoch
Pages
320
Publisher
Penguin
Published Date
2001-12-01
ISBN
0141186690 9780141186696
Ratings
Google: 4.5
Community ReviewsSee all
"An ill-assorted group of misfits form a lay community at an abbey of cloistered nuns. What could go wrong? You've got the closeted and highly conflicted leader Michael, and his hearty, cheerfully racist and misogynistic sparring partner James. There's featherbrained Dora, whose marriage to stick-up-his-ass bully Paul is on the rocks. There's sweet natured Toby, a nice young man looking for spiritual adventure before starting university. Annnddd...the mysterious twins: religious hysteric Catherine and her moody, misanthropic brother Nick, who seems to have it in for the community in general but Michael in particular. Add in a loopy prophecy about a lost bell whose ringing Portends A Death and you have the makings of either great drama or Pythonesque farce.<br/><br/>Somewhat to my surprise, Murdoch manages to hold it all together and generate genuine sympathy and emotion for her oddball characters. Her view of spirituality is ambivalent; she mocks excesses of piety, ("Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed". p 75) yet recognizes the value of seeking fulfillment outside of material pleasures and success. Although she caricatures the community seekers, the nuns are clear-eyed, sensible women, with far more insight into human weakness than their more worldly guests.<br/><br/>Murdoch's final verdict can be best be summed up by this lovely passage:<br/><br/> "To know clearly what you surrender, what you gain, and to have no regrets; to revisit without envy the scenes of a surrendered joy, and to taste it ephemerally once more, with a delight undimmed by the knowledge that it is momentary; that is happiness, that surely is freedom". p 138"
Lesley Williams
