I loved this book. Read it in Paris over baguette with butter and jam and yummy coffee. Gothic, mysterious, with characters whose pain seems as real as their situation seems absurd. ( )

I love LibraryThing to read what other ordinary people think, but for the first time I find that other readers' comments about Iris Murdoch's The Unicorn have not resonated with me at all. The narrative has a strong "manufactured" feel about it which immediately undermines any value it may generate. A lot of readers focus on its Gothic characteristics, which says nothing about the story, its message and its ideas. For me its the religious angle that defines this book and allows you to make any sense of the story. The title says it all - the unicorn's allegorical meanings is both that of the beguiled lovers and that of the Christ figure - a mix of pagan and christian elements. Ultimately the book is about redemption.

Marian, a strongly independent 30-yr old single woman from London, sensing her boyfriend is just not that into her and unlikely to lead to marriage, takes on the job of a governess at a remote mansion. When she gets there, effectively cut off from the rest of the world, she discovers there are no children and that she is to be the companion of the mistress of the household, Hannah, a woman only a few years older than herself, and abandoned by her husband. The arrangements in the household seem very odd and Marian quickly understands that Hannah is being kept here like a prisoner and the household staff are her gaolers. What is more unnerving is that Hannah appears to accept her circumstances. The story unfolds with Marian learning more of the circumstances that have led to the current arrangements and the personalities and the relationships between the household staff and the only neighbour in the district. An attempt to rescue Hannah from her predicament fails and triggers the sequence of events that lead to the dramatic conclusion of the story.

The story only serves as the vehicle to explore the themes of sexuality and the role of Christ. Basic urges create a diverse range of relationships and outcomes with which the characters have been forced to deal with varying degrees of success and varying implications for others involved, resulting in seemingly impossible circumstances to resolve. The Gothic genre is great to convey these two themes and a lot of Classical and Shakespearean references are made to emphasize other traits. Hannah, seemingly the most confined of all the characters, willingly bearing her confinement, acts like the redeemer of those around her, releasing them from the chains of their past actions to allow them to live again.

Although the book was easy to read it was not a satisfying one. ( )

Again a bit less compelling after the heights of The Bell and A Severed Head. But a lot of classic Murdoch tropes here, the sea, a set of people with intertwined and mysterious relationships between them, a newcomer upsetting the balance.

I re-read this for a book group, and definitely got more out of it a second time around, and discussing Murdoch characters and novels is so enjoyable - the monstrous characters and the mad merry-go-round of relationships just lend themselves to group discussion. ( )

The Unicorn didn't convince as a novel. Murdoch's characters so often are caught in a merry-go-round of slightly mad behaviour; we expect that. But these particular characters are pasted into an attempt at Gothic style and milieu that leaves one dissatisfied. Aside from acting bonkers in this remote setting, the cast are unremarkable.
No one is ever developed satisfactorily, least of all Marian, the protagonist who arrives on the scene an unremarkable steady sort of young woman and soon is overwhelmed by the presence of Hannah, the Unicorn, herself.
Leave this until late in your Murdoch reading - there are better nuggets elsewhere.

Subpar Murdoch. Unless you are a Murdoch completist or really like neo-gothic novels, I wouldn't waste your time. ( )

Atmospheric verging on suffocating. The story is of a woman who is in self-imposed exile after an accident where she then fled to New York. In a nameless, solitary environment the relationships between the characters are incestuous and complicated. I felt Murdoch was exploring psychological territory that I wasn’t quite understanding though the novel got under my skin anyway. ( )

When Marian heads out to Gaze Castle to work, she assumes she will be teaching children. When she arrives, however, she finds that she is going to be a companion to the young woman of the household, Hannah. Marian quickly sees that there is something very odd going on at the castle.

The start of the book actually really drew me in. It felt a bit creepy, kind of gothic, and I was curious to find out what was going on. But, the execution of the book fell a little flat for me. I think I wasn't as interested when we switched viewpoints at times to a neighbour, Effingham. I definitely didn't find him as interesting, but even with Marian, there were parts that just didn't hold my attention as much in the middle of the book. The end got a little more interesting again, but not enough to bring my rating up from “ok” to “good”. The book remains at 3 stars, “ok”, for me. ( )

Another reviewer here wonders if Murdoch is having us on - well - somewhat. But I'll wager it's more that she was playing around with the gothic form, seeing how she could push it, prod it, shape it. The gothic form is 'sensational' - that is devoted to sensually evocative imagery - nightmare, horror, secrets, death..... As often is the case Murdoch has a picture in mind, in this case, the tapestries of "The Lady with the Unicorn" - most particularly the last one, I think: "A mon seul desir' which I won't even attempt to translate (because it is ambiguous in the extreme). A young woman answers an add for a tutor, and finds her 'pupil' is a woman about her own age who has not left her home since a terrible incident with her husband (who has gone to America). The young woman, Marian, is alternately intrigued and frightened by the atmo of the house and the situation and becomes determined to free Hannah from her 'imprisonment' - but the story twists and turns and nothing is at it seems, of course. It's not a successful effort ultimately with clunky dialogue and uneven characters (some well-developed, some caricatures) - there's a feeling too of disorder, of some threads being dropped, of some twists and turns happening too quickly.....but all the same it is packed with Murdoch's musing about death and love, and the customary humor: "Geoffrey had always quite rightly told Marian that she did not know how to dress. She favoured a formless exoticism, he favoured a muddy simplicity: in fact neither of them had any taste at all." Delicious prose, acute perception, wit; it is an Iris Murdoch novel and therefore, even flawed, completely worth reading. ***1/2 ( )

I am much relieved to see that other readers were as baffled by this book as I was. Is it an allegory? Or is Murdoch having us on? I have no idea.

Two or three years ago there was a craze for Jane Austen novels with interpolated monsters. This is the same thing the other way round: a 1960s novel full of references to Land Rovers and Austin Sevens, but with characters and a plotline that seem to have escaped from a Brontë novel. A young woman answers an advertisement for a governess at a remote Irish castle, but it's the 1960s, not the 1840s. And what's more, she finds that she's been hired to teach Mrs Rochester, not Adèle.

Obviously, Murdoch is having her little joke at the reader's expense, but this isn't just a spoof gothic novel: at least some of the fear and trembling goes with real existential concerns that we are supposed to take seriously, discussions about good and evil, guilt, free will and all the rest. I found it rather tough to keep track of the philosophy in the midst of the ludicrously over-busy plot: it's probably a book you should read twice to get the best out of it. First time through, you're always getting sidetracked into taking the story seriously. ( )

A fine example of the neo-gothic genre in which the 1st 2/3rds are great - very foreboding, but the climax wanders too much into soap opera territory. ( )

Murdoch's The Unicorn (1963) plays with a variety of genres and situations to examine individual choices -- both moral and amoral. It begins as a Gothic novel with a young governess being brought to an isolated mansion -- her charge is not a child but an enigmatic woman who may or may not be a murderer, who may or may be a persecuted victim, but who lures into her enchanted net those with whom she comes into contact. I'm not sure the novel is fully realized, but it is intriguing, and the spell of the novel lingers in the reader who engages in the quest. ( )

My theory is that anyone who reads this novel without first seeing the name of the author, would recognise just how bad it is.

Did anyone get anything out of this book about power, guilt or captivity? This book failed not only in capturing truth about any of these subjects, but also in producing convincing character studies. Marian is a husk, and while Effingham is more complicated, the author doesn't really place him in a setting where his character can be studied.

The second half of the book dissolves into a ludicrous mess where characters pair-off left and right, declare love willy-nilly, and act one way and then another because they are supposedly under the "spell" of Hannah and Gaze.

Motivations are left unexplored. Characters stay the caricatures they were from the very beginning. If you read reviews for this novel, you will see the word philosophical applied liberally. A couple of conversation on Hannah as object or person, as one worshipped or loved, does not a philosophical novel make.

We want to call this novel philosophical not because it sheds light on the nature of life, love, exsistence, guilt or any of the subjects that we are concerned with, but because it's seems to be going on about something that sounds important. Since it's written by an famous author and so-called philisopher, and the critics have given it favorable reviews, then it must be wonderful, philosophical.

Here is the truth---it's just ill-conceived and badly cobbled together. Any highschooler could tell you that.

If this wasn't written by a popular and well established writer, it would've never seen the light of day.

I feel more and more reading books is lke any other form of consummerism that we indulge in in this country. The bigger the name, the more satisfying it's suppose to be, so when it turns out to be a big disappointment, everyone is afraid to say anything for fear of being thought the fool.

Sorry for the ranting, I think I'm tired of picking up books that everyone raves about, just because some idiot somewhere decided it was "literary".

Go here for a less biased and very accurate review of the novel.
http://www.btinternet.com/~edandmill/reviews/unicorn.htm ( )

Though I've read this several times, I'm afraid I didn't "get" it. But I did enjoy it! Murdoch was defining her own form, still, and her later novels don't have quite the same feel as this one does, even though it has a characteristic opening, with unattributed dialogue . . . and no, that's not annoying! ( )

tbr