Fama&Calliope - The Bell, by Iris Murdoch
Never before have I been so captivated by the characters of a story. They are vibrant, splendid, shimmering with life and an almost tangible vitality.
We first experience the lay community at Imber through the eyes of Dora Greenfield, an "erring wife" returning to her tyrranical husbad. Murdoch captures the very aura of the countryside, with its lush grasses and dense trees. With water that trickles through streams, and with the thick glassy sheets that make up the lake. It is indeed "something pure and out of the modern world." And so, with the "modern world" all but forgotten we learn more about the characters' lives.
Dora, who gave up an art scholarship when she married; Michael, the head of the community who is haunted by the memories of his disastrous homosexual love for Nick Fawley, now also a member of the community; and Toby Gashe, Nick's young understudy in engineering.
Whether the story is about the Bell itself is difficult to say. Its symbolism and presence seems to influence everything with authority and life. Moreover, when Dora reverently thinks, "How could the great bell have suffered her to drag it here so unceremoniously? She should not have tampered with it. She ought by rights to be afraid of it. She WAS afraid of it," her thoughts are not misplaced.
The sensuality of the novel (for indeed it expresses sensuality with every platonic word) flows with a rare inate balance and harmony, drawing together each event and bringing them to a satisfied conclusion that seems to sigh even as we turn the final page. Of God, of love, of living and understanding what we live, no more can be said. Murdoch expresses these ideas and ideals in words that do not contain answers but direct us towards them; towards their existance.
FIRST PUBLISHED: 1973, by ChaHo & Windus.
EDITION PUBLISHED: 1999, by Vintage (with introduction by A.S. Byatt).