Categories: uncategorized
Date: 26 May 2008 11:13:32
I've just finished my trawl through The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch. It's a "proper book" in terms of being a novel which is highly enjoyable but having a plot which one has to work with to engage in. It's also very much a book set in it's time, a time I have distant memories of yet seemed to have forgotten until I read this.
The book itself is a mere 30 years old, yet it makes me realise how much has changed within those three decades. It also made me realise that what is said about "Gen X" being a hinge generation is so true.
The characters in the novel were mostly around the age my grandparents would have been at that time, (and in the late 70's I spent alot of time with them, which kind helped me when I was trying to visualise the environment and characters in the book). By the time I had gotten to the end of the book I had realised that so much of the "everyday" referred to yet not explicitly described would make it a very different book if somebody of Third Party's generation were to read it. I think it would lead to a general feeling of "gaps" because of the ommission of things which didn't exist then but we take for granted now.
Let me explain. At one stage Hartley refers to filling the tin bath because he can't be bothered to get the boiler filled and working. For most young people today that would be beyond comprehension, yet I remember my other grandparents fill the tin bath for me and putting in front of the fire, because they had no bathroom. Similarly when Hartley went and cashed a cheque at the village shop, which didn't even stock The Times, I realised that it would have been green £1 notes that he would have been given, rather than any £1 coins and the blue £5 notes would have been larger than those given out by cash machines today.
These are only little differences, yet they are very real ones. Similarly the absence of mobile phones and a microwave was clear. One just knows if the same book had been written today that one of the characters, most probably Rosina, would have been screaming about the fact they couldn't get a signal at Shruff End. Oh and one seriously doubts if Hartley and Ben would have gotten the visa to emigrate to Oz today.
It's plot though was as dark and grounded as any "post-modern" writing by Coupland or his ilk. In fact I would say if you enjoy wrestling with Coupland, but haven't tried Murdoch you should. Her writing is different yet comes from a similar school which embraces a solid characterisation with philisophical enquiry and moral comment in an engaging, yet at times dark plot reflecting the uncompromising complexities of reality and the fine line between these and our own imagined fantasies.