Iris Murdoch's debut—a comic novel about work and love, wealth and fame
Jake Donaghue, garrulous artist, meets Hugo Bellfounder, silent philosopher.
Jake, hack writer and sponger, now penniless flat-hunter, seeks out an old girlfriend, Anna Quentin, and her glamorous actress sister, Sadie. He resumes acquaintance with the formidable Hugo, whose ‘philosophy’ he once presumptuously dared to interpret. These meetings involve Jake and his eccentric servant-companion, Finn, in a series of adventures that include the kidnapping of a film-star dog and a political riot on a film set of ancient Rome. Jake, fascinated, longs to learn Hugo’s secret. Perhaps Hugo’s secret is Hugo himself? Admonished, enlightened, Jake hopes at last to become a real writer.
"Murdoch, a philosophy don at Oxford, was that rarity, a philosophical novelist who could create real characters, not premises with names attached . . . Right out of the gate she displayed all her sinuous gifts—her questing mind, her comic skepticism, her wildly entangled plots." —Time, "All-Time 100 Novels"
"Under the Net announces the emergence of a brilliant talent." —The Times Literary Supplement
"Of all the novelists that have made their bow since the war she seems to me to be the most remarkable—behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist." —The Sunday Times
"A dazzling story, light and comic in touch." —The Times (London)
“As gorgeous and as strange as I remembered . . . I first read Under the Net more than 20 years ago. Iris Murdoch’s novels had enthralled me back then and I had greedily devoured her works. They have a particular appeal to young adults, speaking as they do of the glamorous mysteries of adults who seem to feel as deeply as teenagers, yet drink cocktails and have oodles of sex. . . . The novel thrums with a sense of possibility. . . . Murdoch’s gift for unusual yet precise descriptions of character is displayed in full. . . . Many of her most distinctive traits are present here in full-throated form. There are dazzling, phantasmagorical scenes . . . philosophical dialogues and a powerful enchanter figure. . . . The novel reads more freshly, energetically and involvingly than a great deal of 21st-century literary fiction. Murdoch achieves a rare thing: you want to be with her characters in all their glorious mayhem and to see the world as they do. When it appeared it must have shone in the gloom like a burst of crazy sunlight. Even today it has lost none of its manic, magical brilliance.” —Philip Womack, The Times (London)
Iris Murdoch's debut—a comic novel about work and love, wealth and fame
Jake Donaghue, garrulous artist, meets Hugo Bellfounder, silent philosopher.
Jake, hack writer and sponger, now penniless flat-hunter, seeks out an old girlfriend, Anna Quentin, and her glamorous actress sister, Sadie. He resumes acquaintance with the formidable Hugo, whose ‘philosophy’ he once presumptuously dared to interpret. These meetings involve Jake and his eccentric servant-companion, Finn, in a series of adventures that include the kidnapping of a film-star dog and a political riot on a film set of ancient Rome. Jake, fascinated, longs to learn Hugo’s secret. Perhaps Hugo’s secret is Hugo himself? Admonished, enlightened, Jake hopes at last to become a real writer.
Praise
"Murdoch, a philosophy don at Oxford, was that rarity, a philosophical novelist who could create real characters, not premises with names attached . . . Right out of the gate she displayed all her sinuous gifts—her questing mind, her comic skepticism, her wildly entangled plots." —Time, "All-Time 100 Novels"
"Under the Net announces the emergence of a brilliant talent." —The Times Literary Supplement
"Of all the novelists that have made their bow since the war she seems to me to be the most remarkable—behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist." —The Sunday Times
"A dazzling story, light and comic in touch." —The Times (London)
“As gorgeous and as strange as I remembered . . . I first read Under the Net more than 20 years ago. Iris Murdoch’s novels had enthralled me back then and I had greedily devoured her works. They have a particular appeal to young adults, speaking as they do of the glamorous mysteries of adults who seem to feel as deeply as teenagers, yet drink cocktails and have oodles of sex. . . . The novel thrums with a sense of possibility. . . . Murdoch’s gift for unusual yet precise descriptions of character is displayed in full. . . . Many of her most distinctive traits are present here in full-throated form. There are dazzling, phantasmagorical scenes . . . philosophical dialogues and a powerful enchanter figure. . . . The novel reads more freshly, energetically and involvingly than a great deal of 21st-century literary fiction. Murdoch achieves a rare thing: you want to be with her characters in all their glorious mayhem and to see the world as they do. When it appeared it must have shone in the gloom like a burst of crazy sunlight. Even today it has lost none of its manic, magical brilliance.” —Philip Womack, The Times (London)
