- Audio Cassette
- Publisher: Sonic Audio (July 25 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0743800109
- ISBN-13: 978-0743800105
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“A power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist.” –Sunday Times
“She is incapable of writing without fascinating and beautiful colour.” –The Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
“She is incapable of writing without fascinating and beautiful colour.” –The Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Book Description
Martin Lynch-Gibbon believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover all at the same time. But when his wife suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional re-education.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Entertaining Comedy,
By benoitstpierre (Montreal) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Severed Head (Paperback)
I enjoyed this story about power, love, control, and sincerity. Without being an amateur of psychological monologues, its tempo kept me reading. In only two sessions I savoured and it was never a bore.Comparing this COMEDY to the Great Novels of mankind would only show the same poor judgement and mauvaise foi as comparing Aleksandr Sokurov with Woody Allen. Molière, Feydeau, Wilde & alli would be much better candidates, if whining about the unfairness of some author's reputation would have not been plainly stupid, anyhow.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Understanding this book,
By Isabeau (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Severed Head (Paperback)
I read this book in college. Some previous reader had underlined every appearance of the word "understand" - and for once I was grateful. I suggest you try that too.
2.0 out of 5 stars
a very disappointing read,
By A Customer
This review is from: Severed Head (Paperback)
"A Severed Head" is the first and very likely the last novel by Iris Murdoch I'll read.It isn't by any means a disgrace, but it falls far short of the expectations raised by the hyped reputation of Ms. Murdoch.Ms. Murdoch is clearly not a great writer. Just read a page of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens or Virginia Woolf to remind yourself what acuteness of insight, depth of vision and felicity of expression great artists can achieve. Alas, "A severed head" is not even a good novel. The twists of the plot are ludicrous (at the end of the novel, almost all male-female love relationships will have happened or been revealed in the brisk course of a few weeks), the characters little more than the embodiment of a few adjectives each. The dialogue rings false : there is precious little differentiation of tone and speech, every one drops high-brow cultural references at regular intervals. The mirroring of the narrator's confusion with the London fog is the very heavy simile that Ms. Murdoch beats to death for 200 pages. This novel has been seriously crafted by a well-read professor who is not a genuine artist. The gist of the issue is that Ms. Murdoch has a few intellectual points to make (on love and seeing, mainly); she constructs her novel to achieve them, but does so with little of the true powers of vision and of expression on which the art of writing and the joys of reading rest. Intellectual novels can be successful, of course, provided there is enough spirit and/or language mastery to go with the ideas - think Dostoïevsky or Proust. If you want a beautiful example of novelistic art, you'd do much better with "The photograph" an exceptionally fine work by Penelope Lively on the same theme, without the weighty intellectual pretensions. If you want to read a great modern novel, "Disgrace" by JM Coetzee will show you the abyss between a well-meaning but rather limp attempt at literature by a serious don and greatly moving art.
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