Post by yewtree on Oct 15, 2005 16:10:24 GMT
The Time of the Angels by Iris Murdoch is a curiously claustrophobic experience. The characters seem trapped in their lives, unable to move beyond the destiny ordained for them by character - they are like the painted angels on Eugene Peshkov's icon. As ever, Murdoch's prose is divinely precise. At the end, though the characters leave the house, they are still trapped in the strange sad webs of their destiny, and still detached from each other and from other human beings, still viewing everything through a distorting lens. Leo Peshkov reminded me of Lafcadio in Les Caves du Vatican - though Leo realises that one cannot live without morality because he experiences remorse for his immoral action.