{"id":260,"date":"2014-05-31T23:10:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-31T23:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/05\/31\/iris-a-memoir-of-iris-murdoch-by-john-bayley\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T09:12:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T23:12:32","slug":"iris-a-memoir-of-iris-murdoch-by-john-bayley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/iris-a-memoir-of-iris-murdoch-by-john-bayley\/","title":{"rendered":"Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch by John Bayley"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I read the book many years ago, and I was disappointed that the book concentrated more on the person Iris had become and not on the person she had been.<\/div>\n
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On the front cover are the words: ‘The greatest love story of our age; incomparable’. I have read a few of the editorial reviews, and the feeling seems to be very much the same: a wonderful tribute to Iris Murdoch. I love Iris Murdoch’s writing, and, over the years, I have read many of her novels. She was a gifted person, intellectually surpassing many of her peers. Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch<\/i> interlaces all that was so positive about Iris Murdoch with the sadness and the degradation of the illness that finally ended her life. In fact, at times, I feel that, in the book, the greatness of Iris Murdoch becomes obliterated by long descriptions of her inability to think and\/or communicate as she used to be able to think\/communicate. The book is frightfully sad, and it left me wondering as to what its main purpose might have been. Perhaps it is a love story, but I feel that a true love story would have concentrated much more on Iris as she really was, not on the person she became because of a devastating illness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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www.telegraph.co.uk<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read the book many years ago, and I was disappointed that the book concentrated more on the person Iris had become and not on the person she had been. On the front cover are the words: ‘The greatest love story of our age; incomparable’. I have read a few of the editorial reviews, and … <\/p>\n

+ Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3613,"href":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/3613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}