The Sacred and Profane Love Machine – Iris Murdoch

A writer of detective fiction who has not recovered from the loss of his wife becomes involved in the life of a neighbor's family. I really enjoyed this, my latest trip through a Murdocian world, And this one is very Murdoch, so many of the things I have come to expect. Blaise is very stupid, the other men all rather unsatisfactory in some way. A few marvelous scenes towards the end – including dogs going berserk, and a madman in an airport – which were all rather horribly farcical, but brilliantly done of course. I loved the strange little boy Luca. After having hated the Black Prince so fiercly, it was a relief to find that I hadn't after all begun to hate IM, i had just hated that one book.  I have to report that some pages started to come out of this bc copy while I was reading it – and this revealed the book to be more fragile than it had looked at first.So I have stuck it together a bit – but it doesn't look very pretty. It is readable though – with some care. So I am marking it AVL – but I won't be releasing it – as noone wants to find such a battered old copy. However anyone wanting it from me just needs to ask.