The Nice and the Good

The shallow silvery metal dome glowed with a light which seemed to emanate from itself and owe nothing to the sun, and about the slim tapering outer extremity a thin line of lambent blue flame rippled and leapt. It was difficult to discern the size of the saucer, which seemed to inhabit a space of its own, as if it were inserted or pocketed in a dimension to which it did not quite belong. In some way it defeated the attempt of the human eye to estimate and measure. It hovered in its own element, in its own silence, indubitably physical, indubitably present and-yet other. Then, as the children watched, it tilted slightly, and with that movement which they could never confidently interpret either as speed or as some sort of dematerializing or actual vanishing, was gone.
The twins sighed and sat up. They never spoke when the saucer was present.
'It stayed a long time today, didn't it.'
'A long time.'
'Isn't it odd how we know that it doesn't want to be photographed.'
'Telepathy, I expect.'
'I think they're good people, don't you?»
'Must be. They're so clever and they don't do any harm.'
'I think they like us. I wonder if we shall ever see them.'
'We'll come back tomorrow. You haven't lost that ammonite, have you, Henrietta?'
'No, it's in my skirt. Oh Edward, I'm so happy about Daddy coming back.'
'So am I. I knew he'd come back, actually.'
'I did too. Oh look, Edward, it's getting quite dark, it's raining out there over the sea.'
'So it is. And look real breakers at last. How super!'
'Why it's starting to rain here now, real rain at last, lovely rain!'
'Come on, Henrietta. Let's go and swim in the rain.'
Hand in hand the children began to run homeward through the soft warm drizzle.

The End

Under the Net

Iris Murdoch's novels have always been noted for their ntelligent, witty observation of character and place.

Under the Net, her first novel, about a struggling young writer at large in London, she showed too a brilliant ]air for fast-paced comedy.

The Flight from the Enchanter in her second novel, Iris Murdoch strikes a delicate, alance between absurdity and tragedy, between –ealism and fantasy. In the opinion of many devotees his is her most entrancing novel.

An Unofficial Rose

When An Unofficial Rose was first published in 1962 it was almost unanimously acknowledged by the critics as a masterpiece.

An Unofficial Rose is in the great tradition of the English romantic novel; a love story that has not been debased by sentimentality. Iris Murdoch dissects and lays bare the anatomy of human relationships with such skill that to read her can, at times, be an almost overwhelming emotional experience.

A Severed Head

As macabre as Jacobean tragedy, as frivolous as Restoration comedy, Iris Murdoch's fifth novel takes sombre themes – adultery, incest, castration, violence and suicide – and yet succeeds in making of them a book that is brilliantly enjoyable.

The Bell

When a group of well-meaning neurotics comes together in a lay religious community to try to forge a new and better life, the situation calls out all the humour and insight for which Iris Murdoch is famous.

The theme of her novel is the dark conflict between sex and religion, symbolized by the new and the old bells of the abbey convent across the lake.

Here is a story which again demonstrates this writer's unusual sensitivity and her talent for creating character.

The Italian Girl

There seems to be no limit to the self-destructive cancer of this family divided against itself. This is his Murdoch in frighteningly sombre mood. Never has she used to greater effect her talent for laying bare the deepest and most secret places of a human being.