The Bell by Iris Murdoch

It's taken me a while to finally write about this book, even though I read it quite a while ago now. It's taken me a while to get my head round it, and to be honest I'm still not sure if I'm quite there. It is the strangest book I have ever read, and if it hadn't been an exam text I would never have stuck with it.

The Bell tells the story of the inhabitants of a lay religious community in mid-20th C Oxfordshire. Murdoch's characteristic observations on human nature are apparent, as the narrative is driven by the interactions between characters. The main protagonist is Dora, and erring wife returning to her much older husband, the controlling and possessive Paul. Other characters include Michael, who is constantly struggling with his suppressed homosexuality and his religious fervour; Toby, a young innocent who discovers a mysterious bell in a lake; and Nick and Catherine, a brother and sister pair who have past dealings and hidden feelings towards Michael. The bell discovered by Toby is also an important aspect - almost a character in its own right, from Murdoch's giving it a name and lots of the vital, living imagery associated with it. It is the discovery of the bell that begins to reveal the complex human relationships of the story and to fracture the peaceful life of the community...

This is the first book I have read that I have had such strange emotions about. It is the only book I have ever read that I have not connected with at all, in any way. It's not that it's a bad book - despite it being one of her earlier novels, Murdoch's writing is very good and subtly powerful. It's just that nothing - not the setting, not the plot, not a single character - struck a chord with me. It's about people whom I have absolutely no understanding of. Some of them I got very bitter about (Dora is a rather hopeless heroine, particularly at the start of the novel) but mostly I was completely indifferent. The only character with whom I could sympathise even a tiny bit was Nick, the destructive and unsympathetic force of the plot, and a character who only appears a handful of times. Everything that Murdoch tried to achieve through the plot and the characters' crucial, narrative-driving relationships left me absolutely cold. It has been the weirdest reading experience of my life. I feel nothing about this book. It is just a collection of words about a non-story. The hours of my life spent reading it are just a blank space in my memory. The only reason I remember anything about The Bell is that I have to revise it and write essays on it.

For how to use language, this book is a good one. Iris Murdoch can clearly write in good English. But I found it clinical, apathetic and utterly unmoving. Not a bad book, not negative - just not. I can't express how completely removed an experience reading this book was. One that will lurk on my shelves gathering dust (after my exams! Until then I will be frantically flicking through it periodically, trying desperately to feel something that will help me remember it) before meeting an unceremonious end in the charity shop. Not one for the bonfire. Not one for the bedside table. Just not.