Items related to Iris and the Friends: A Year of Memories

Iris and the Friends: A Year of Memories - Softcover

 
9780349113104: Iris and the Friends: A Year of Memories
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 
After more than three years of suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch died in January 1999. Early that month she was taken to a home for the terminally ill, and she remained radiant and calm for the last weeks of her life. The last year or so of Iris Murdoch's life provides the framework for IRIS AND THE FRIENDS, but within this structure John Bayley returns repeatedly to memories of his own earlier life, and of more than forty years of marriage to Iris. Alzheimer's is a lonely predicament for the carer, and Bayley describes how he copes with the ordeal of watching his wife become terminally ill by forming a growing dependency on memory as a stand-by, consolation and friend. In the final chapters, Bayley describes his wife's death which was an entirely serene one. He writes of how he is learning to cope with the loss of Iris, and how he is creating a new life for himself. Partly an autobiography, partly the biography of a marriage, IRIS AND THE FRIENDS provides a sensitive and, at times, a gently humourous lesson in the uses of adversity and will enthrall those fans of IRIS who wanted to know more about Bayley himself.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Product Description:
Paperback by John Bayley-inside cover previous owner inscription in ink/pencil-Pub:-Abacus 2000 part I & II-presents 282 pages edges age toned...understanding love -a true marriage & death-Book condition:-good tight clean copy.#7
Review:
Novelist and thinker Iris Murdoch died on 8 February 1999 after living for three years with Alzheimer's disease. Her husband, novelist and academic John Bayley, had previously written movingly of the impact of her illness in Iris: A Memoir.

Iris and the Friends tells of the final year of Murdoch's life, when she was visited more by her own imaginary "friends" than by the exigencies of real life. It brings the story through Bayley's increasingly precarious hold on present reality, to his own breakdown, Murdoch's final happy weeks in a home for the terminally ill and finally her quiet death. Although ostensibly a sequel, it is more an exploration of Bayley's new friends: the memories that were sparked off precisely as Murdoch lost her own--of his childhood, army years, first loves and, of course, their marriage.

But there are other "friends". At one point Bayley writes: "The old Eng. Lit. again. I taught it for nearly fifty years and feel detached from it now." Yet literature emerges here as the one remaining constant in his life. Scarcely two pages go by without a reference, almost involuntary, to Hardy, Coleridge, Austen, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Thurber, James, Lawrence, Woolf or Murdoch. Sometimes Iris appears to respond to the shared literary in-jokes, but more often the pair become "two animals pushing together, nudging and grooming each other, grunting together as they bask in a mutual doze."

It's an incredibly intimate glimpse into what should be a personal life, but as Bayley observes tellingly: "There is a surreal sense in which Alzheimer's has turned Iris herself into art. She is my Iris no longer, but a person in the public domain." --Alan Stewart

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherAbacus
  • Publication date2000
  • ISBN 10 0349113106
  • ISBN 13 9780349113104
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages288
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780715629321: Iris and the Friends: A Year of Memories

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780715629321
Publisher: Duckworth, 1999
Hardcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Bayley, John
Published by Sphere Books Ltd (2000)
ISBN 10: 0349113106 ISBN 13: 9780349113104
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
BennettBooksLtd
(LOS ANGELES, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 0.49. Seller Inventory # Q-0349113106

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 75.88
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 3.27
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds