In general, you can lump Iris Murdoch novels into three categories. One, a trickster or devil figure plays with others’ emotions in horrifying ways for various amusements: the novels that I’ve read in this category are The Black Prince, The Sea, the Sea, A Fairly Honourable Defeat, Under the Net. Another category involves her creating a messianic or influential “enchanter” figure generally based on her relationship with Elias Canetti — whether she’s writing earnestly or ironically: The Philosopher’s Apprentice, Flight from the Enchanter, A Message to the Planet. Then there are the more miscellaneous novels: A Severed Head (which might be a devil novel actually), Henry and Cato, The Unicorn, The Italian Girl, and The Red and the Green.
The Red and the Green is a decidedly miscellaneous novel. It’s not one of her strongest novels, but it’s interesting because she doesn’t write about Ireland a lot, and given that she shares a split heritage with Ireland and England, and given she was born there, you’d want to pay more attention when she does. The issue is that this isn’t a great novel by any stretch. It feels underbaked in a lot of ways, and the plot is relatively forgettable. I think she’s trying to write an Irish novel and includes the cartoonishly elaborate family trees and the references to the Irish revolution but it ends up feeling unauthentic in its execution.
A few years after this novel would come JG Farrell’s Troubles, which is a brilliant novel about the Irish revolution written ironically and yet sympathetically by an English writer. So read that instead. And all of this is still to the point that I LOVE Iris Murdoch novels, so read different ones instead.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Green-Vintage-Classics-Murdoch-Paperback/dp/B00OVLSVXW/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1551270139&sr=8-1)