J. G. Links
The Book and the Brotherhood (Chatto, £11.95) is one of the best books of the year I have read. I don't see how any other novel could compete in a good Iris Mur- doch year but apparently they do, so your readers will be spared such dull unanimity. Who else could take us into that world of people we recognise so well, talking as our friends do, wearing the same clothes, living in the same kind of places (all as we well know from the fascinating minute descrip- tions), yet behaving in such extraordinary ways which, as we get to know them, are the only ways they could behave? My psychiatrist, if I had one, would probably say I long to be an Iris Murdoch character. On the whole I am glad I'm not one, but what a joy they are to read about.
I bought Francis Haskell's Past and Present in Art and Taste (Yale, £25) in the course of duty while reviewing a book about Berenson for The Spectator and was astonished to find these explorations of the nooks and crannies of art history as intri- guing as a Murdoch. The author's hoover sucks up gold from places where only the driest of dust would be expected and he introduces you to people you have never heard of but who turn out to be Iris Murdoch characters in their own way although, being real, not quite as convinc- ing. Only when you know as much as Professor Haskell, it seems, can you be relaxed about art history and not take it too seriously.
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