This sets in motion a sequence of events in which Martin’s weakness and need are clearly evident. Throughout the novel Murdoch uses the weather to indicate Martin’s mental and emotional state – the dense fog that covers the London streets and pervades his mind. Martin is shocked when his wife announces that she wants a divorce because she is deeply in love with Palmer. Iris Murdoch has made a tightly-structured novel, using Martin as the first-person narrator. There are only a few characters – Martin, who is complacently happy with his mistress Georgie and his wife Antonia, Palmer who is Antonia’s analyst, Palmer’s half-sister, Honor, and Martin’s brother and sister Alexander and Rosemary. I felt I was looking into a different world and time. As I was reading it I thought it would make a good farce and then I discovered that Iris Murdoch had adapted her book for the stage. Recently I’ve read A Severed Head, first published in 1961 and have been wondering what to write about it without giving away too much of the plot. I’ve enjoyed several of her novels and biographies of her by John Bayley, Peter Conradi (an official biography)and A N Wilson (this last one was rather controversial). This last February was the tenth anniversary of Iris Murdoch’s death.
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