“A Fairly Honourable Defeat” by Iris Murdoch - review

“A Fairly Honourable Defeat” by Iris Murdoch:

In her thirteenth novel, published 1970, Iris Murdoch depicts a social network of which the nucleus is the seemingly intact and harmonious marriage of Hilda and Rupert Foster who live a quiet, content, fairly comfortable life in one of the better-off suburbs of London. 

Into this world comes Julius King, rich, handsome, clever, seductive, deceitful and diabolic. He machinates his victims (and there are not a few) by silently and cunningly isolating them and therefore making it impossible for them to talk to each other. He uses them as puppets in a play, employs their fears, their jealousies and insecurities to his advantage, uses flattery and critique and thus creates a tormenting atmosphere for his victims who, a muddling philosopher, a shy youth, a straying woman, an aging housewife, a gay couple, all succumb with tragic results to his machinations and loose their until then harmonious environment. 

This alone would make a great story but it is with great humor, wit and brilliant dialogue that Murdoch elevates the story into regions of divine comedy. The book vibrates with verbal energy, intense, funny, comical, tragic. With Murdoch, a keen observer of the human mind, it is always about the mechanisms of relationships, the inner workings, the why we act the way we act.

The extremely humane and honest representation of the gay couple especially, in which Murdoch explores deeply and without prejudice what it is that makes a marriage a marriage, is remarkably well done. One should not forget that this was 1970, just three years after the decriminalization of private homosexual acts in the UK. Even today, fifty years later, it remains a very beautiful piece of literary representation of a same-sex marriage.

This novel is a gem in philosophical and psychological insights and testifies of a grand understanding of the human mind. And yet this tale is not a dark one only, it shines and shivers with silent, repressed laughter.

As in a Shakespearean comedy, not all is lost in the end, there still remains hope, some order was destroyed but some important lessons were learned and the future seems far more full of hope than hopeless. 

**Dame Jean Iris Murdoch (15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. 

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry