The Black Prince cover art

The Black Prince

Vintage Classics Murdoch Series

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Vintage Classics Murdoch: Funny, subversive, fearless and fiercely intelligent, Iris Murdoch was one of the great writers of the 20th century. To celebrate her centenary, Vintage Classics presents special editions of her greatest and most timeless novels.

Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.

Ex-tax collector and author of two unpopular novels, Bradley Pearson wishes to devote his retirement to writing a masterpiece. But the doorbell and the phone keep ringing and every ring brings with it an ex-wife, a friend in need, a sister in trouble or a young woman seeking a teacher and so dusty, selfish Bradley is plunged into the muddles and mysteries which will end in his doom.

Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1973.

©1973 Iris Murdoch (P)2020 Penguin Audio Classics Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Thriller & Suspense Fiction Funny
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Enjoyed this fifth audio Murdoch novel for Murdoch's usual scathing insight into the human condition and philosophical enquiry. However, I found my enjoyment marred by the audio narration by Anthony Howell. He narrated as if he was a coach tour guide giving information about the interesting sights. Perhaps his tone of voice was not to my personal taste, but his deep burr felt out of keeping with the story. His rendering of the dialogue was a lot better and I was able to imagine the characters. But I was somewhat glad to reach the end of this audio book and that is an exceptional experience for me using audio books.

Reliability of the narrator

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A middle-aged man falls obsessively in love with a girl on the threshold of womanhood, after a tangle of desires and repulsions involving the other characters has already been established. Nobody quite knows what they want, and any certainty is revealed as delusion. The plot is farcical and by turns comedic and tragic. The main narrator and the other minor ones all seem to be unreliable. The story follows the classic arc of tragedy and ends in nemesis but not necessarily self knowledge. I enjoyed listening to this audio book immensely, having forgotten everything from my first reading of the book about forty years ago

Anthony Howell’s reading is competent and not jarring, with the exception of a number of mispronunciations that ought to have been corrected, as for instance the use of the French ‘hommage’ for the English ‘homage’. That is a recent affectation and detracts from the sense of period.

Murdoch’s Lolita

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This was the first novel I had read by Iris Murdoch. It took a while to get into it, since the characters (particularly the narrator) are all unpleasant and hard to relate to. However, it builds into a tense character drama and the narrator slowly starts to get his cumuppance, which is satisfying. This is not the straight forward telling of a story, instead it is using some slight of hand and there are literary twists so you need to stick with it. I found it a little like reading a Margaret Atwood novel in that respect. It is not hard to follow, however. There are some philosophical passages referencing Plato, etc, which I would probably have skipped over if it hadn’t been an audio book.

Slow to start but grows on you

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Exquisite classic of English literature. Easy reading and very rich in content at the same time, beautifully written, simply marvellous.

Marvellous

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This book is like a time capsule from early 1970's middle-class literally life which is interesting. It's structure is unusual (to me at least) and contains a really complex dislikable central character who has difficulty and sometimes hard to believe relationships with everyone in this life, particularly females. I found it very tough to get through to times as its hard to root or empathise with any characters. My conclusion is that Murdoch is a bit too highbrow for me, its clever but too close to smug and pretentious in the same way Martin Amis can be. Just tell us a good story...

Brilliant narration btw

Challenging, fascinating and disturbing

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