READIN

So I finished Nuns and Soldiers yesterday and found it to be a bit of a disappointment. I was really getting into the story through Tim's character and really enjoyed it when he got back together with Gertrude. But then the last hundred pages or so were really downhill -- it seemed to be a lot of extremely self-conscious tying up of loose ends on Murdoch's part. I think the book was supposed to be about Ann Cavidge, whose character is not really too interesting; when Murdoch realized she had written a book more about Tim and Gertrude, she decided to write another couple of chapters to focus on Ann -- bad idea. The penultimate chapter in particular, in which Manfred and Mrs. Mount have their big conversation, was not related to the rest of the book in any organic way -- that is to say, it was tied in to the rest of the book by bringing up plot devices from earlier on -- ones which had not seemed particularly important at the time -- and revealing that Manfred or Mrs. Mount or both had played key roles behind the scenes -- which does not strike me as a very useful method of character development. And the last chapter too, with Ann searching for Daisy and hearing people talking about her, was out of left field.

posted evening of Saturday, August 9th, 2003
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