The Red And The Green (Vintage Classics) (2002) - Plot & Excerpts
This book turned out to be educational for me, mainly because my grasp of Irish history has always been fuzzy. Not that Murdoch spells anything out, she assumes the reader understands the historical context already. During the opening chapters, her characters drop references to quite a few historical figures and events, so I found myself putting the book down to search the internet for the details that I didn't know. People such as Parnell, Wolfe Tone, Connelly, and events such as the Act of Union, or the history of the ICA and IRB, and the Irish Volunteers are all part of the backdrop to this story. I'm actually glad Murdoch did not digress into lengthy data drops about Irish History because I enjoyed and prefer the process of doing my own research alongside the reading of the book. Murdoch's approach left her free to focus on the interactions between her characters, so that this book turns out to be a fairly typical Murdoch novel that happens to take place at a dramatic point in history. I do recommend to future readers to familiarize yourselves with some of the history leading up to and immediately following the Easter Uprising of 1916, if you don't know it, as I did not. I enjoyed this book very much. Murdoch has a technique of showing the inner thoughts of several of her characters in a way that heightens the irony, both dramatic and tragic, resulting from her characters' faulty assumptions about each other. Her point often seems to be that much human drama is the result of an irremediable naiveté that humans have about what is in the hearts of others. In this book, especially, it is the men who labor under somewhat hubristic misconceptions about the motivations of the women around them, and they show this hubris in ways that are calculating(Christopher), naive(Andrew), and ridiculous(Barnabas). One is tempted to accuse Murdoch of a bit of cheating, in that she does not, except for in the final pages, get into the heads of the female characters at all, leaving them to be mysteries for the reader to work out, all the while she is exposing the men. However, there is another unifying feature to these male characters that excuses this choice, which would be a spoiler for me to reveal. Another masterpiece from Murdoch, in my opinion.
Easter 1916 as a comic opera with an occasional death. How does Iris get away with it? At one point she had all of the characters turning to each other and saying "This is ridiculous." But it's such good fun and the people in Murdoch's universe are so witty, pretty and/or rich, that I just can't get enough. Pat was an additional treat here, firmly from Mishima Country. "'I think being a woman is like being Irish,' said Frances, … 'Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.'""Barney shambled on the outskirts of the family caravan, an irredeemable figure of fun.""In the black tight trousers she looked like a principal boy in an operetta, vivacious, vulgar and about to become extremely noisy.""'I'm so sorry. I've broken that vase. I was looking for the matches.''It doesn't matter. It's only Ming or something.'""'a woman caught in my situation has to adopt some tone, and it's not easy to combine devastating frankness with calm dignity.'""Christopher hated muddle, hated the plunging to and fro in confusion of half-guilty half-frantic human beings caught up together like carriage horses in an accident."
What do You think about The Red And The Green (Vintage Classics) (2002)?
After reading this, I still can't tell if Iris Murdoch is a serious lady, or a gross sexy monster. Like her other books (that I know, at least), it reads like a cross between a romance novel and a suspense novel with a big dash of metaphysics thrown in. It makes for a good read, but also makes me not quite trust her. I have the pleasurable but uneasy sensation of being taken for a ride.Again like her other books, her characters felt a little like types created to battle out the question how best
—Liza
