The Good Apprentice - Softcover

Murdoch, Iris

3.85

1,618 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140086994 ISBN 13: 9780140086997

Publisher: Penguin, 1986

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Young Edward Baltram's prank of giving his friend Mark Wilsden a drug-infused sandwich and his stepbrother Stuart's decision to forsake a promising academic career for social work bring consternation to their parents and elders

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Review:

"Iris Murdoch at her most artful, juggling philosophy and farce with knowledge and ease." --"Economist"

From the Back Cover:

'She is as elusive as quicksilver, as brilliant as sunlight on water. England's finest female writer' Atlantic Journal

Stuart Cuno has decided to become good. Not believing in God, he invents his own methods, which include celibacy and the abandonment of a promising academic career. Interfering friends and relations question his sincerity, his sanity and his motives.

Stuart's stepbrother, Edward Baltram, is tormented by guilt, believing that he has killed his best friend. He dreams of both redemption and suicide. He is sent on a 'journey to the underworld' to find his natural father, the painter Jesse Baltram, whom he has not seen since childhood. He discovers a father strangely different from his expectations, full of the magic of forgiveness.

Meanwhile, Stuart's moral apprenticeship is causing nothing but trouble. Coming to rescue Edward, Stuart provokes a final catastrophic clash of forces.

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