The Good Apprentice Iris Murdoch by Iris Murdoch 9781101495704, 1101495707 instant download after payment.

Through the spiritual trials of two troubled stepbrothers, Iris Murdoch conducts an inventive allegorical exploration of morality.

Stuart Cuno has decided to become good. Not believing in God, he invents his own methods, which include celibacy, chastity and the abandonment of a promising academic career. At the same time, Stuart’s step-brother Edward Baltram is tormented by guilt because he has, he believes, killed his best friend. He dreams sometimes of redemption, sometimes of the most drastic of solutions - suicide.

"In Murdoch's latest scoring of immobile saints and thrumming sinners, psychiatrist Thomas McCasketville, another philosopher/Prospero - locus of a circle of jittery psyches - treats two young men, urging on one to the myth that heals...With all those cherished Murdochian constants - waters and witchery, metaphysical posturing and concomitant pratfalls - another rounding out (and a bit of a rough-up) of the totality of the human psyche (poled, as it is, by halo and shaggy haunches), which, in spite of Murdoch's gently mocking amusement, makes us seem greater and more vast in nature and aspiration than we are. As always, difficult, dense - and potent."  -  Kirkus Reviews

Iris Murdoch made her writing debut with Under the Net in 1954. She wrote 26 novels and several books of philosophy. Her 26 novels include the Booker prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978), the James Tait Black Memorial prize-winning The Black Prince (1973) and the Whitbread prize-winning The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Iris Murdoch had a number of other novels on the long and shortlists for the Booker Prize over the years, including A Fairly Honourable Defeat which was longlisted for The Lost Man Booker Prize.