Elegy For Iris

"I was living in a fairy story--the kind with sinister overtones and not always a happy ending--in which a young man loves a beautiful maiden who returns his love but is always disappearing into some unknown and mysterious world, about which she will reveal nothing." So John Bayley describes his life with his wife, Iris Murdoch, one of the greatest contemporary writers in the English-speaking world, revered for her works of philosophy and beloved for her incandescent novels. In Elegy for Iris, Bayley attempts to uncover the real Iris, whose mysterious world took on darker shades as she descended into Alzheimer's disease. Elegy for Iris is a luminous memoir about the beauty of youth and aging, and a celebration of a brilliant life and an undying love.

Elegy for Iris is a luminous memoir about the beauty of youth and of aging and a clebration of a brilliant life and an undying love. So John Bayley descibes his life with his wife, Iris Mudoch who has Alzheimer's.

Elegy for Iris is a luminous memoir about the beauty of youth and of aging and a clebration of a brilliant life and an undying love. So John Bayley descibes his life with his wife, Iris Mudoch who has Alzheimer's.

A tribute to author Iris Murdoch, now stricken with Alzheimer's disease, written by her husband of over forty years, in which he discusses their passionate love relationship and traces the progression of her affliction.

'It is wonderfully peaceful to sit in bed with Iris reassuringly asleep and gently snoring. Half asleep again myself I have a feeling of floating down the river, and watching all the rubbish from the houses and from our lives - the good as well as the bad - sinking slowly down through the dark water until it is lost in the depths. Iris is floating or swimming quietly beside me. Weeds and larger leaves sway and stretch themselves beneath the surface. Blue dragonflies dart and hover to and fro by the river bank. And suddenly a kingfisher flashes past.'

A timeless work that will bring healing to anyone dealing with the loss of a loved one. John Bayley began writing Iris and Her Friends, a companion to the New York Times bestseller Elegy for Iris, late at night while his wife, the beloved novelist Iris Murdoch, succumbed to Alzheimer's Disease. As Iris was losing her memory, Bayley was flooded with vivid recollections of his own. In lyrical reverie, Bayley recreates the unforgettable scenes of his youth, from his birth to a civil servant in colonial India to his long romance with Iris and its heartbreaking end. This is the transcendent work of a brilliant man, whose examination of the tragedies and joys of his own life will give readers great healing insight. John Bayley's Iris and Her Friends is nothing less than a classic of true love and sorrow. "Love makes every beautifully formed sentence, every generously shared moment, shimmer and sing."—Donna Seaman, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Something Special was previously unpublished except in a 1950s anthology and in Japan, and rediscovered after her death. It is the only short story that Iris Murdoch ever wrote for publication.Set in Dublin, against the vividly recognisable backdrop of the writer's native city in the late fifties, Something Special is the story of Yvonne, an ordinary, bold young Irish woman who believes there's more to life than marriage to Sam, the respectable young man who's courting her. Written with verve and characteristic sly humour, it moves to a surprising climax and conclusion - a poignant, strangely haunting story about the incompatibility of dreams and desires.

Stuart Cuno has decided to become good. Not believing in God, he invents his own methods, which include celibacy, chastity and the abandonment of a promising academic career. Interfering friends and relations question his sincerity, his sanity and his motives. Stuart's step-brother Edward Baltram is tormented by guilt because he has, he believes, killed his best friend. He dreams sometimes of redemption, sometimes of suicide. Funny, compelling and extremely moving, THE GOOD APPRENTICE is about guilt ridden despair, and the difficult problem of how to try to be good - and the various magical devices which console those who are sensible enough not to try.