A Fairly Honourable Defeat – Iris Murdoch

Rupert and Hilda are perfectly matched. Their only worries are a drop-out son and Morgan, Hilda's unstable sister, just back from America. Enter Julius, Morgan's ex-lover, determined to give Rupert and Hilda's seemingly impregnable marriage a mild jolt. He finds an unexpectedly spirited opponent in Morgan's husband Tallis….. This is a tale of the struggle between two demonic beings, one good, one evil. The evil one wins, but the defeat of the good is a fairly honourable one…… The latest read for those us reading and discussing Iris Murdoch, now only every other month.  I won't say too much about it here though. Suffice to say it is a very compelling, dark story, which I enjoyed a great deal. Earlier in the week I was really tired, and so my reading was slow, and I felt I wasn't moving forward with it. But once I was into it properly, and not so darn tired,  I  could hardly put it down.  There was one character whose head I wanted to rip off so I could jump up and down on it, but maybe that made it all the more compelling.