Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch - Hardcover

Bayley, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0715631594 ISBN 13: 9780715631591

Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, 2002

Synopsis

DIFFERENT OFFER (this item listed here is DIFFERENT from the title and/or picture above. Please see description & pictures by BookGems before placing an order): Edition Duckworth, 1998. ISBN: 0-7156-2848-8. HARDBACK. 190 pages, size: 16.1 x 24 x 1.9 cm. Just light tan to paper edges. Other than that, the new and unread book remains in very good condition: dust cover intact; cloth bound hard cover bright with gilt lettering on spine; text all clean, neat and tight. Prompt dispatch from UK. (Please note the illustrating pictures you see next to our description are from the actual item in our stock and might not match the main page's image, which is sometimes confusing).

About this title

Product Description:

In 1998 and 1999 John Bayley wrote two best-selling, critically acclaimed memoirs of his wife, the great philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch, who had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease since 1996. In this edition, Iris and Iris and the Friends are published in one volume for the first time. At times unbearably moving, at times poignantly comical, the two memoirs provide a fitting memorial for Dame Murdoch, an enchanting portrait of a remarkable marriage and an inspiration for anyone whose life is affected by the tragedy of Alzheimer's.

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0715631594
• ISBN 13: 9780715631591
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320