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The Black Prince

Vintage Classics Murdoch Series

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The Black Prince

By: Iris Murdoch, Sophie Hannah
Narrated by: Anthony Howell
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Summary

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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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 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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It seems the way we read, and the way fiction is written, have changed a lot since 1973. Perhaps back then we were more tolerant of a self-centred middle-aged man droning on and on about his obsessions, but it makes for tedious listening now. This is not to belittle the liveliness of the characters' exchanges or the cleverness of the plotting. The author knows what she's doing, but for me certainly, what she's doing is dated and irritating in the extreme. The ponderous literary style, characteristic of the protagonist, is nonetheless so pompous and elaborated that I laughed out loud sometimes - when I wasn't telling him get on with it, we've got the point. Who refers to birds as 'feathered songsters', for heaven's sake? Dame Iris's philosophical alter ego is also much in evidence, and we are treated to long disquisitions on art and love which, while emphasising the self-reflexivity of the novel, also contribute to the protagonist 's verbosity and (pace this is an audio book) love of the sound of his own voice. I understand that the treatment of women as perpetually crying with gaping wet mouths while pink flesh puckers through holes in their tights is a POV thing, revealing the protagonist's misogyny and distaste for the physicality of femininity. This is what I mean by reading having changed since the book's publication - as a contemporary reader I found these descriptions offensive, and I hated that two of the main women characters wail about losing their individuality to their husbands and seem to have absolutely nothing else to do. A third is a wealthy schemer and the fourth a middle aged man's fantasy of a nubile young lover. Yes, yes, I know that's how they're supposed to come across, but pleasurable? Not to me. And just when you get to the end and think you can breathe a sigh of relief, there are FOUR postscripts and then one more for good measure. Honestly, I think this novel could be retired!

To be or not to be, ad infinitum.

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