After the

ball was

over . . .

J. L. Carr

THE BOOK AND THE BROTHERHOOD by Iris Murdoch

Chatto & Windus, £11.95

These are hard times for book-writers. Booker season is here and publishers shed novels thick as autumn leaves, compelling literary editors to fall back upon casual labourers in the literary field. And so it is that one of our most honoured (CBE, DBE) and prize-winning novelists who, in any other month, would have the attention of a specialist reviewer is given to a contributor whose normal diet is cricket anthologies. This is unfair to Miss Mur- doch and anyone wanting a true assess- ment of this long romantic novel need read no further.

We are invited to observe a Commem Ball. The moon, like a crumbly cheese, hangs from a warm, darkening Oxford sky. The highly educated guests are assembled and instantly identified — Gulliver (`Gull' in diminutive) Ashe (`eyes of pure unfleck- ed liquid golden-brown'), Tamar (`sad grey eyes . . . virginal white dress . . . poised and ready to fall in, love'), Gerard (`com- manding bone structure . . . a nose appear- ing to end in a blunt plane'), Jenkin (`Jenk') Riderhood (`easily pleased by small treats'), Conrad ('a gorgeously young young American'), Violet, Rose and Lily (who has taken off her sandal and is smelling it). Several of these are the Brotherhood of the book's title.

Ominously, in the wings, waits Crimond who despite being 'crammed with revolu- tionary virtue' has fashionably been ex- pelled from the Communist Party. He is writing the Book. Utterly off-stage is a 'golden boy' who, in these peaceful years, has had to make do with death in a crashed glider.

From several marquees, bands are offer- ing waltzes, tangos, slow foxtrots. Here and there, women come and go talking of Marx, mourning lost loves, feeling mis- understood, brushing grass-clippings from their backs, screening boyfriends being sick into bushes.

Things go placidly along. Rose (an Hon. with Anglo-Irish connections) recalls 'superhuman voices telling her in slow ringing tones some picturesque piece of history or legend', whilst Gerard admires her dress — 'It's so intensely simple, that wonderful dark green, like laurel, like myrtle, like ivy'. (Later, he will unusually propose marriage by inviting her to be his research assistant.) Along comes Lily and, noting her baggy silk trousers drawn in at the ankle, her exotic blouse weighted down with gold chains and her lips outlined in silver paint, Rose tells her that she looks scrumptious. Casual chat reveals more information about Crimond. Lily describes him as a swine, then as a shit.

But things warm up. Crimond appears in full Highland costume and 'taut as a bow, weightless like a leaping dog', catches up someone else's ex-Quaker boarding-school wife in a frantic eightsome reel ('her dark eyes huge and staring, a fierce, wild Oriental look'). Then, this being Oxford, someone ends up in the river. It is the dispossessed husband.

It may seem that I have dwelt overlong on this overture. Yet this not only gives the flavour of a splendidly extravagant story but what happens in the remaining 550 pages springs from it.

And now the real action begins.

But I shall not lessen your anticipatory pleasure by telling what happens next. Do not be deterred by the baleful portrait (courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery) nor the author's calling as professional philosopher, nor even by the mysteriously hieroglyphic book-jacket. (This turns out to be interlinked English and will provide hours of cryptic pleasure to courses in Modern Literature.) For the tale is plain sailing and follows accepted convention. True, there are dis- cussions of Greek literature, religions, cosmic energy and the people never smile. But there is a servant, Annushka, and a cat called Mousebread, the Mauve Cat. Lov- ers kiss fervently and address each other ardently — 'You are my peace: I have no other' and 'Falcon, Falcon, don't fret little Falcon'. Properly, any huffing and puffing love-making stops short of a climax.

And plenty happens. There is a tower- top fist-fight, a novel suicide pact by car crash on a long Roman road (Rover v. Fiat), a Russian roulette dining-table duel. Whilst one participant thinks, 'Would it were over', the other fires. A door opens and a visitor who was wondering whether or not to give up school-mastering, gets 'a neat red hole in the centre of his forehead: his face expressed surprise'. But do not be put off by all this violence: most probably none of the people are like anyone you know.

And so, back to the title. It is not another book about a book. The Brother- hood may fear the Book; the reader needn't. In fact, one learns so little about it that I began to wonder if Miss Murdoch cleverly wanted me to suppose that the Book was the book I was reading. For one character says of it, 'I'm quite carried away', another, 'It's an important com- munication, a huge interconnected argu- ment'. Another declares it 'a synthesis, it's immensely long, it's about everything'.

And Jenk has the last word (on p.339 and before he's shot) — 'It won't be tosh; it'll be deep. But I wish I could have it explained.'

No one does.