Books: The Flight from the Enchanter

Finished Iris Murdoch’s The Flight from the Enchanter last night. This was her second novel, published in 1956 when she was roughly my age now. As always, I find her descriptions of relationships fascinating and her characters intriguing. However, this isn’t one of her better books and the plot was disjointed, the characters a little too enigmatic to be able to fully enjoy.

The Times Literary Supplement said about this book: “Most readers will probably find something in The Flight from the Enchanter to amuse or interest them, yet few possibly will have any great feeling of satisfaction when they put it down.” That expresses quite well how I feel.

Typical of Murdoch’s novels, The Enchanter tells several overlapping stories. There is one character, Misha Fox, which I assume is the enchanter – but while his behind-the-scenes manipulation was suggested at throughout the novel, frustratingly the extent of his influence was never actually revealed.

Another central character is a woman named Rosa who leads a tangled life which includes complex relationships with illegal Polish immigrants, the dominating Misha Fox, a spineless brother and a flighty boarder. There is also a plot line around an old feminist magazine which is run by her brother but threatened by Fox. The most broadly entertaining part of the novel was when the founding ladies of the magazine, now grey-haired and hard of hearing, arrive at an annual meeting to prevent the magazine from being sold – a meeting which descends into scrimmages over champagne and tea yet manages to save the journal.

There are various other characters who get more or less developed as the book goes by. It almost feels at times as if Murdoch was never quite sure where to go with this. Perhaps she invented for herself such a colourful, populated world that she could not figure a way to leave anything or anyone out. But ultimately, this weakens the novel as the story meanders and finally peters out, leaving the reader with the dangling threads of unanswered questions.

Yet despite this negative review, I still enjoyed the book. Murdoch’s characters are so far from two-dimensional – it is no wonder that they often slip out from her grasp.