Iris: A memoir of Iris Murdoch - Softcover

Bayley, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349114293 ISBN 13: 9780349114293

Publisher: Abacus, 2002

Synopsis

John Bayley's account of his long and loving marriage to the great novelist Iris Murdoch takes us on a journey, from their love affair's comically inauspicious beginnings in the Oxford of the early fifties (Bayley courted Iris on account of her unchallenging plain looks and their first date consisted of a revolting dinner followed by a disastrous dance when Iris sprained her ankle) to its slow and painful closure when the onset of Alzheimer's more than forty years later, which should be devastating. Yet as Bayley charts the gradual dissolution of Iris's remarkable intellect side by side with the detail of their gloriously eccentric and profoundly satisfying life together, what emerges is the complex portrait of an enigmatic and brilliant woman and of a marriage of quite extraordinary, unforced happiness, and some remarkable insight into the richly mysterious symbolism of Iris Murdoch's novels.

Wry, intelligent, and unexpectedly hilarious, IRIS is an unforgettable inquiry into the nature of love and identity and a uniquely moving articulation of loss.

About this title

Review:

"Like being chained to a corpse, isn't it?"

This is a memoir, not a biography, with obvious resonance. John Bayley, former Professor of English at Oxford, and Iris Murdoch, philosopher and author, have been married for more than 45 years. She has shown the degenerative effects of Alzheimer's Disease for the last four years. The words quoted above were not, needless to say, his. He chronicles a shared experience that can no longer be shared except with those outside of it, and as such is vital for him as he copes, rather than grieves. He purposefully blurs the boundaries of past and present as he describes the marriage of two brilliant intellectuals, determinedly unworldly and collegiate, mixing wine and water (they are serial dippers) throughout Europe as they serenely move "closer and closer apart." When Iris's intellect deteriorates her dependency inevitably increases, and they are "sailing into the dark" (her words) until the end of the book, when Bayley contends that the voyage is over, and they have both arrived somewhere. It is the spiritual answer to her perpetual question: "When are we going?", and provides a quietly uplifting resolution. John Bayley has written a magnificent paean to their love. Without underplaying the realities of living with someone with Alzheimer's, he writes in a moving and dignified way, without sentimentality, of a woman rather than a condition, who is still every bit his wife, if even more his dependent. He believes that their marriage released the child in Iris; now they watch Teletubbies together, wordlessly secure. --David Vincent

Review:

This is the greatest love story of our age. Incomparable (OBSERVER)

A beautiful testament of love (IRISH TIMES)

A joyous paean to his beloved... This is a brave and poignant portrait of a very English marriage between a brilliant couple...the heartbreaks here recoreded are balanced against the joys of a lifetime's companionship with a partner who has clearly never ceased to be an object of adoration. (THE TIMES)

A unique glimpse into the alchemy of marriage ... a work of art (Victoria Glendinning, DAILY TELEGRAPH)

About this edition

• Publisher: Abacus
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0349114293
• ISBN 13: 9780349114293
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304