![]() ![]() The review in the Times Literary Supplement was a case in point: at the end of a long and unenthusiastic piece, which accurately pinpointed the faults of The Nice and the Good and of Iris Murdoch’s fiction generally, the anonymous reviewer felt obliged to say, in words which betrayed extreme critical discomfort and evasiveness, “Despite a conclusion which is not far from being soppy, The Nice and the Good remains oddly undismissable,…unusual if often recklessly trusted power of imaginative invention, and a serious, generous, and indefatigable attention to the problems of the moral life.” ![]() Some such theory, at least, is needed to account for the fact that reviewers tend to receive her novels in an awed and intimidated fashion, and critical comment is restricted to a narrow spectrum of remarks, ranging from uneasy approval to mild and nervous dissent. Iris Murdoch’s annual novel now seems to have become an established British institution: in private it may be derided or dismissed, but in public it gets the respect customarily given to venerable traditions. ![]()
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