Word: murdochs
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BRUNO'S DREAM by Iris Murdoch. 311 pages. Viking Press...
LANCER (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Murdoch lancer (Andrew Duggan), owner of a vast cattle ranch in Northern California, and his two sons fight off land grabbers in this 1870 vintage western. Premiere...
...careful with a Murdoch ending: Is she, perhaps, spoofing the conventional novel as well as the curative powers of love? Yes, but her occasional barbs are more like twinges of a habit not yet kicked. This is a well-written and well-meant novel of lovers gone astray but saved by love. If more is meant, Iris Murdoch, a gentle ironist, conceals it too well...
...subjects of Miss Murdoch's examination are met at a charming summer house in Dorset by the sea. The house belongs to Octavian, a fat, well-placed government official who loves his wife Kate (despite an occasional lapse involving his secretary), and cheerfully allows her to take in a widow with son, a divorcee with twins, a Dachau survivor and Latinist, and Octavian's brother, a failed India hand. The couple's dear friend, John Ducane, is a constant visitor, a wealthy bachelor lawyer who is so far gone in his infatuation for Kate that stolen kisses...
...with Willy, John. But the role of father-confessor plus Mr. Fixit is really a trial to him. He is having troubles of his own as he is trying to dodge an old mistress to devote his repressed, puritan self to the torturing game he plays with Kate. Author Murdoch knows her lovers through and through, and can prove with almost careless skill that they love for the wrong reasons or not at all. Even depressed Willy can tumble a friend's mistress in the friend's own bed and intone: "This is sacrilege, my Jessica. A very...