- Published: 5 November 2015
- ISBN: 9781448104925
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 688
Living on Paper
Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995
- Published: 5 November 2015
- ISBN: 9781448104925
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 688
Reading these letters is like living Murdoch's whole creatively, sexually and intellectually voracious life alongside her, and at breakneck speed. Thrilling
Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live: A Life of Montaigne
Few writers comprehend the murky human messiness of desire like Iris Murdoch, or could plot like her, and these letters show us why. Her life -- the multiple lovers, the emotional strain, the terrible food, the nuns and prizes and philosophy -- was chaos. She'll always be my favourite writer; now I understand why
Charlotte Mendelson
This collection of letters provides a fascinating insight into the life of a complex and important novelist. It is a wonderful book
Alexander McCall Smith
We find a passionate engagement with the world of ideas, but most of all with friends, lovers, and pupils. These letters reveal Murdoch's extraordinary talent for affection, exuberant sense of fun, razor-sharp intelligence, and acute awareness of the transcendent
Karen Armstrong
A suprising glimpse into the life of the avant-garde author
Harper's Bazaar
An unprecedented exposure of the heart and mind of a major novelist and thinker (the author of 26 novels and three major works of philosophy) and a woman who lived a life of unusual intellectual and personal freedom
Anne Chisholm, Prospect
Deeply impressive
Guardian
By turns, her letters show confidence, kindness and great consideration for her friends... For me, their real power is that they draw us back, irresistibly, to the books, her wonderful books... a vibrant portrait of this extraordinary woman
Psychologies
Fascinating... The letters are full of examples of her tolerance and her genuine interest in the inner lives of her friends. They can move engagingly from a rough, self-deprecating account of her failures and achievements to a series of penetrating asides about human nature and the power of art to illuminate it
Richard Strachan, Herald Scotland
The letters are fervent, philosophical, frenetic and witty... If there is an overarching message in this volume is is how far ahead of her time Murdoch was
Rivka Isaacson, Independent on Sunday
A compulsively readable volume... She was a star of the first magnitude in the intellectual constellation of post-war Europe... Iris Murdoch's letters are a testament to her determination not merely to lead the intellectual life but to enjoy it too
Daniel Johnson, Standpoint
Astonishing epistolary abundance from a woman who meant it when she told a friend that she could "live in letters"... Few books leave the reader with as dizzying sense of the need to question absolutely everything
Daily Telegraph
With their deep knowledge of Murdoch's life and work, the editors have produced an authoritative, readable and informative volume that contextualizes the writer's vibrant, intense, and sometimes slyly witty correspondence. ... An impressively edited, sharply revealing life in letters
starred review, Kirkus
A selection of Iris Murdoch’s most important letters… collectively they provide a fascinating insight into one of the last century’s greatest thinkers
Choice Magazine
Murdoch was not writing for posterity; she was writing for her friends, or rather as a way of maintaining her friendships, whether intellectual, passionate or both...the letters reinforce Murdoch's qualities as a person
Independent
Murdoch is an engaging, almost girlish correspondent, and the evidence here ranges from early letters written to a schoolfriend about pre-war London ... to her last confused words, written two years before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's
Daily Telegraph
An intensely personal insight into Murdoch's romances and friendships, and the whirlwind of social life that she maintained over ther decades ... they frequently also underscore the genius of their author
Irish Independent
Exemplary... The reader grows up and grows old with Murdoch
Literary Review
The letters themselves have been selected with conviction and care...the overwhelming sense of this volume is one of richness
Times Literary Supplement
Wonderful
Justin Cartwright, Observer
Her mind, here as in everything she wrote, is formidable
New York Times
If Murdoch's letters shock, it is because her behaviour is perhaps exaggerated, but not unrecognisable. We can laugh at self-deceivers in her novels for the same reason: not because we are so constant, but because they flit from passion to passion merely more frequently than we do. If we look carefully at these contradictory, incompatible people - Murdoch's characters; Murdoch herself - we don't see strangers; we see ourselves
Miranda Popkey, New Republic
Astonishing
John Sutherland
Titillates on every page
Jon M. Sweeney, The Tablet