Message To The Planet

by Iris Murdoch

Hardcover, 1989

Status

Available

Call number

823.914

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Random House Canada (1989), Hardcover, 563 pages

Description

For years, Alfred Ludens has pursued mathematician and philosopher Marcus Vallar in the belief that he possesses a profound metaphysical formula, a missing link of great significance to mankind. Luden's friends are more sceptical. Jack Sheerwater, painter, thinks Marcus is crazy. Gildas herne, ex-preist, thinks he is evil. Patrick Fenman, poet, is dying because he thinks Marcus has cursed him. Marcus has disappeared and must be found. But is he a genius, a hero struggling at the bounds of human knowledge? Is he seeking God, or is he just another victim of the Holocaust, which casts its shadow upon him and upon Ludens, both of them Jewish? Can human thinking discover the foundations of human consciousness? Iris Murdoch's endlessly inventive imagination has touched a fundamental question of our time.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member LyzzyBee

Bought 30 Dec 1994

I have to say that this is not my favourite Murdoch. Like the remaining ones we have to read now, I had only read this once before. I think I recall liking The Green Knight more; I certainly hope so. Anyway. With its echos of an Indian novel whose title I can't remember (it's not

Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur, but one about a chap who sits under a tree and accidentally becomes a guru), there is a good dollop of clever irony in the book, and I like the collection of Oxford friends, and a couple of the characters, but it doesn't engage and attract like The Book And The Brotherhood. There is a whopping great example of one of our group's Themes, though. I'll be interested to see what the others think of it.

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LibraryThing member Marzia22

Amazingly pretentious book filled with incredibly self-absorbed people.

LibraryThing member BookMonk

Would any wife allow her husband to move his young mistress into the house? That’s what happens this long novel written when Murdoch was approaching the end of her illustrious literary career. Add to that a man raised from the dead and A mathematical genius worshiped by hippies, you might think

you’re immersed in a fantasy novel rather than a story about wealthy academics and artists pursuing their egotistical desires. Murdoch wouldn’t claim to be a realist writer however and philosophy, the preternatural and cosy domesticity sit happily side by side in this thoroughly entertaining tale, that even has a happy ending for most of the characters.

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LibraryThing member BrokenTune

I tried for almost half the book, but just couldn't get into it. I couldn't figure out when the story was set, didn't warm to any of the characters, and the plot just left me cold. So, I gave up. It's a little disappointing because I loved the other books I read by Iris Murdoch, all of which either

had a gripping plot or, as The Bell, were littered with quite humourous scenes.

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