The Sandcastle - Iris Murdoch

     I've read several of Iris Murdoch's novels in the past year and loved them.  This was one of my favorites.  Like her other novels, The Sandcastle is filled with dark humor, captivating characters, and plot twists. It is a story of love, guilt, loyalty, ambition, magic, and art.
     At the heart of the novel is a love affair.  It begins with a verbal conflict between Mor, a teacher at St. Bride's school, and his wife, Nan, over his future and that of their children.  It is immediately clear that Nan usually wins such arguments because Mor gives in to keep peace.  Mor reflects:

     "The early years of their marriage had been happy enough.  At that time he and Nan had talked of nothing but themselves.  When this subject failed, however, they had been unable to find another - and one day Mor made the discovery that he was tied for life to a being that could change, who could withdraw herself from him and become independent.  On that day Mor had renewed his marriage vows."

     When Rain Carter, brought up in France by her artist father, comes to St. Bride's to paint an official portrait of the retired headmaster, Demoyte, Mor finds himself falling in love.  She loves him, too, but his twenty-year marriage and two children are barriers to its consummation.  Neither of them are adept at this sort of situation - she is very young and his weakness lies in his problem with making decisions.  What follows are chance meetings, intercepted letters, and the appearance of a gypsy/vagabond who seems to be a harbinger of doom.

     Rain tells Mor that, as a child, she tried to build sandcastle's on Mediterranean beaches but when she "tried to make a sandcastle the sand would just run away between my fingers.  It was too dry to hold together."  Like the sandcastle, the lives of the characters are swept up in the chaotic tide of events and what once seemed secure slips away from them.
     The novel ends with Mor's daughter, Felicity, thinking, "Everything was alright now.  It was alright.  It was alright."  But perhaps it wasn't.
     If you've read other Murdoch novels and liked them, give The Sandcastle a try.  It has echoes of The Black Prince but I thought it was much better.
 

- Frances