The Black Prince (Penguin Classics)

This is a classic work, dealing with the meaning of life, of personal relationships, the inability of an individual to understand his life or his connection to others, and the fundamental dishonesty with which people make their way in the world. Murdoch writes beautifully, evoking the eternal verities, even as she populates her book with self-seeking ninnies. Bradley Pearson tells the story, and the story is about himself: neurotic, puritan, naive, and weak. He is so convincingly tiresome that the book begins to flag toward the end of Part Two. That itself may have been one of the many strokes of brilliance Murdoch has in store. A strange, powerful read.

This was my first time reading an Iris Murdoch novel, and it won't be my last. She has managed to create a central character, the writer and former tax man Bradley Pearson, who possesses many unforgivable flaws, yet this reader was still (mostly) able to sympathise with him. This is partly because Murdoch surrounds poor doomed Bradley with other equally flawed characters that inflict suffering upon him. Naturally, at every plot turn Bradley could have made much better decisions, but his foolishness only increased my sympathy for him.It is hard to go much further in this review without spoiling several moments of this thriller/love story, but what I will say is that the sections in the novel that digress away from the plot to explore Bradley's philosophical musings on life, art, love, and writing are, in my humble opinion, just long enough to be interesting but not long enough to be infuriating. No one will agree with everything the novel has to say on these topics, but Bradley's/Murdoch's insights are pretty consistently interesting.I particularly enjoyed the postscripts at the end of the novel, five of them written by other characters from the novel. These postscripts provide, depending on your opinion of Bradley, corrective points of view to his version of events, or yet more evidence that the people in his life were self-centred narcissists. Both, of course, could be true.Technical kindle stuff : This kindle edition only had a tiny number of typos, which is pretty good these days - so many pre-digital novels are riddled with typos when converted to kindle these days, so this conversion of an early 1970's novel was clearly done with care.My only real quibble is with an odd error in the edition I bought on kindle. The kindle store said the introduction was written by Sophie Hannah (it still says this), but after buying and downloading I see that the introduction in my edition was actually written by Candia McWilliam. I enjoyed Ms McWilliam's introduction, but it was an odd error to see from an established publisher. Is there another edition floating around in the virtual kindle shelves?

A pedantic, masochistic, high-minded, fifty-eight-year-old autodidact living in central London in the late-twentieth century with exalted ideas about ethics, eros, suffering and his artistic destiny, falls in love with the twenty-year-old daughter of close friends whose marriage is falling apart. The protagonist loves Hamlet, quotes Plato and Dante, and gets done in by cleverer, more worldly people in his social set who assume that he loves them whereas he, with a sense of superiority, believes they are deluded. With philosophizing, psychologizing, humor, irony, and multiple perspectives conveyed via an introduction, letters and postscripts, this rueful story characterizes in depth several late-twentieth-century English people and their muddles. The delusional power of egotism, three failed marriages, social obligations and nuisances, aging, emotional neediness, unwanted seduction, and smart people working at cross-purposes inform this purgatorial novel.

Bradley Pearson (the Black Prince of the title) is an Inspector of Taxes in a dull London office. He is also the failed author of a few novels. Pearson is tall, puritanical and unhappy. Iris Murdoch's 1973 novel is a tour de force in narration as Bradley tells the story of his love for a younger woman. The book is filled with long meditations by the author on truth, lies, love, death and the cruel world in which we human beings live. It also deals with such topics as sex, death, jealousy, envy and murder. This is a book for sophisticated grown up minds which will never be popular with the masses of general readers. It is a novel which takes time and thought to savor, revisit and reread. The chief persons in this modern day tale of love and death are:Bradley Pearson-The Black Prince who is a failed writer. He is the narrator of the novel sharing with the reader his innermost thoughts, fears, joys and anxieties. He is sexually and emotionally impotent. Only at the novel ends does he achieve a kind of peace.Arnold Baffin-he is the longtime friend/enemy of Pearson. Baffin has achieved success as a popular author. He is also a ladies man who has had countless affairs; often fights with his wife and is attracted to Pearson's ex-wife Christian.Christian-She is Bradley's former wife who is beautiful, rich and shallow. She remarried and moved to Illinois. Following the demise of her husband she returns to London. Pearson despises her. She has an affair with Baffin later marrying a fellow worker at Bradley's tax office.Rachel Baffin is the fat wife of Arnold who has a brief "fling" with Bradley. Bradley will later shield her from the most tragic event in her wretched life.Julien Baffin is the average 20 something daughter of the Baffins. She has an affair with Bradley. He is many years older than she. She is very emotional, high strung and fickle. She is Bradley's image of a beautiful woman with whom he wishes to spend eternity. His dreamy love for her is pathetic in the illusions he draws around this average young callow person.Priscilla is the suicidal sister of Bradley Pearson. She is cast aside by her adulterous husband Roger who takes up with a young dentist named Marigold.Francis Marloe is the gay brother of Christian. He seems to support Bradley through all of his many trials and troubles. This book is operatic in the major themes it explores. It is filled with musing by the author on deep moral issues which may turn off some readers. It is an erudite intellectual thriller which is filled with horrible revelations and twists of fate. Iris Murdoch is an acquired taste. She tells her stories by using narration; conflicting points of view by different characters, letters and delving into the minds of her characters. I find her addictive and well worth reading.

It took me a long time to find Iris Murdoch. Perhaps I was afraid of what I might find - when someone has read a lot of books, it is almost too overwhelming to admit that there is yet one more author who will change your life. But here I am, working through the great writer's oeuvre, and in a state of almost constant awe and admiration. The Black Prince, for example, is a remarkable work that fuses story, poetry, philosophy, psychology into a pulsing fire of creative magic. It reads like a thriller - it is a thriller, in one sense - but no hack thriller writer ever digressed in the way Murdoch does to discuss art, love, marriage, life, men and women; the Black Prince is, however, "unputdownable." A brief review hardly skims the surface of its fascinating depths, but before you look away in boredom, let me say - I'm finished. The Black Prince is simply a book everyone - everyone who strives to understand the world - must read.

It is the best novel I have read. Deep and brilliant. Iris Murdoch rises up into a class above her other works.It is about love and illusions.Written in four parts, the first part (which is half the book) is outstanding in its use of language and poetic concepts. The second part is a meditation on love, which some might not appreciate. The third part is indescribably thrilling and grips a part of you that never existed before having read the second part. The 4th part is the denouement that smashes illusions with illusions.And all the while there is a penetrative description of life; the complexities of our ordinary lives brought out into awful conscious truth. To be read behind the sofa with eyes nearly shut. It's about you and me and everyone who has ever loved another to the edge of insanity.There are parts that I couldn't follow, but they fascinate me enough to read it all again with a reference book beside me. I delighted in the philosophical parts of it that explored the ground of our Being. It seems to be written by a male, but of course, it's not. She writes about women which a Western man would never be 'allowed' to write these days.Although it is 'dark', in that it reveals terrible truths of living, it is a work of genius that very few authors are capable of achieving.(Although life as a hedgehog can be prickly at times, it is much less complicated and unembellished than a human's lot in the Murdoch world.)

Iris murdoch's Black Prince is a novel that explores the many intricacies of human relationships. Possibly it's her best book because she combines her philosophy of life with a first rate and absorbing story. All her characters in their encounters with each other reflect our own comings and goings, weakness and strengths. Over the years, I've read most of her novels, beginning with The Bell. Iris Murdoch is my favourite novelist and I place her among the greats such as Charles Dickens. She is uniquely herself but offers her readers much to meditate upon..

Fascinating Murdoch - unreliable - well, not exactly narrator, novelist rather - Bradley Pearson recounts the events of his 58th year. Murdoch has great fun with literary theorists and academics, helpfully giving several ways of analysing the narration by way of adding the opinions of various characters on Bradley's book at the end. 'Hamlet' features strongly. Platonic ideas are played out. There seems little to like about Bradley yet like him in some odd way we do (well I did anyway). Love, death and redemption crop up throughout yet we are, naturally, (this is Murdoch) offered no easy answers to any questions concerning them. A richly satisfying read from one of the greatest 20th century novelists

My least favourite - so far - of IM's books. Couldn't warm to the characters, especially the main man who was just so intolerably self obsessed (I guess that may be a back-handed compliment), and found it all just too far fetched. I so enjoyed The Sea The Sea, however, so still intend to read some more.