Book Review: "The Bell" by Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch is an author who is either a big hit or a huge miss for me. Some of her books are incredible with storylines woven perfectly together and other books by her are also like this but fail to capture my imagination. Ultimately, my favourite Iris Murdoch book has to be any one of the following: The Severed Head, The Sea, the Sea or The Book and the Brotherhood. I have to admit though, The Bell, is definitely going to be up there on the ones that definitely did capture my entire imagination. Starting off as a sad story, it moves into a comedic farce and then ends in absolute horror and tragedy of the human condition.

Life is not a joke - or is it?

Dora is a slightly forgetful girl who is married to a historian named Paul. Paul is not a nice guy, he doesn't respect Dora and doesn't speak to her like his equal though they are married. Dora keeps leaving and coming back to him because purely, she is afraid of him. They are moving to a small community for a while in order for Paul to work on some manuscripts for the local abbey.

Toby is another character who is trying to search for his place in the world and he goes to stay in this community before he goes to Oxford University. He is accompanied by a man called James. Both of these characters serve a huge importance and, as aspiring to academia is a theme in a lot of Murdoch's novels, we can't be surprised to see them.

Dora also gets to meet many members of the community: Michael, Mark, Margaret (Mark's wife), Catherine, Catherine's twin brother Nick, Peter Topglass and Patchway. There is a huge focus on morality, ethics and righteousness in this community which makes Dora feel as if she is being metaphorically cornered as she has never had a requirement for any of these things.

Dora gets close to characters such as Catherine and Michael, but Michael has these strange nightmares in which he wants to do something very important and then, the dream is squashed down by the weight of his past. I'm not going to say what it is because it'll ruin the story a bit. But it is very important to why everything else happens the way it does.

The whole book revolves around the missing bell that is supposed to be at the top of the abbey. It has been missing for centuries, a local legend suggests it was drowned in the lake. Toby decides to let Dora in on a prank he will pull on everyone because of his respect for Dora and want to be closer to her. I won't say what the prank is but it is too, very important for the way the story works out.

The community is filled with silences and secrets. People hide things from each other and guard their secret lives with their public lives. They hide behind masks and don't show who they really are out of fear of being cast out of the community. I think that there are definitely a lot of people in small towns who can relate to this - they don't want to be or seem abnormal to others out of the fear of being tossed out of the crowd and being alone. But, ultimately, everyone starts to crack at some point.

One of Iris Murdoch's most intricate novels which weaves together the lives of so many people and their secrets into a mess only having to untangle them again, but this time with dire consequences. A brilliant achievement of modern literature.