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theciz's review against another edition
This is an excruciating book about a pompous, thoroughly unlikable man who retires to a house by the sea. I couldn’t finish it, not because the writing wasn’t good or effective, if anything because it was too effective. I suffer really strongly from second hand embarrassment, and boy does this have it in spades. Every time our character makes yet another poor, delusional decision I found it almost unbearable, and you can’t exactly skip passages because then you’d be skipping everything. It got to the point where I would feel physically nauseous when the narrative was heading towards the next inevitable interpersonal disaster. Truly, a portrait of a man as a slow moving car crash. If you don’t get second-hand embarrassment, I could really recommend it though. But I personally just had to quit and read a summary.
lilylanie's review against another edition
4.0
I usually find it difficult to enjoy a book where I hate every single one of the characters, but in this case that seems to be the point. Charles' self-centred worldview is so complete as to be laughable, and all of the other characters seem almost as much like caricatures. Of all of them I disliked Hartley the most, and I cringed ever time she spoke, but again I know that was the point. The audiobook narration by Richard Grant was incredible and I highly recommend it to anyone.
krobber's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
relaxing
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
kermittuesday's review against another edition
It was just too boring and I was forcing myself to go back to it. There’s too many books on my tbr to force myself to read something.
mark5327's review against another edition
challenging
funny
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
stjernesvarme's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
lina_bouslimani's review against another edition
5.0
"I felt upon the empty darkening road a shuddering sense of my utter solitude, my vulnerability, among these silent rocks, beside this self-absorbed and alien sea."
This is a book about a man reiterating his obsessions, revisiting them ad infinitum, without a final resolve. Much like life, the events described on Charles Arrowby's narrative journal rarely transcend his unreliable and excessive inwardness, there's a no faithful mirroring of what truly happened. The genius of Murdock in this novel lies precisely in personifying a man's--a megalomaniac--flow of consciousness.
Written in forms of interrupted journals, the retired playwright Charles retreats to an old beach house, a self-declared dialogue mnemonic, he goes about his days with an exhaustive prose of everything around him; he's in love with the sea, the seclusion suits him, at the peak of his isolation he has Jungian superstitions about sea monsters and ghosts living in the house, au-fur-et-à-mesure, he writes about the people he left behind in London, the women towards whom he felt resentiment, and talks profusely about his true first childhood love, Haretly.
The plot stirs suddenly from nothing happening to all the people Charles left behind slowly invading his life again.
Charles receive an emotional blow when he finds out that Hartley, lives in the village across from him, she is an old woman now who seem to have challenged wits and a dull character, she's married to what later Charles decides to be an abusive husband, he follows her relentlessly despite her strong objections, yet he spends dozens of pages concocting fantasies about her undoubtful great love for him, completely consumed by what seem to the reader at first, genuine and believable convictions.
"Jealousy is perhaps the most involuntary of all strong emotions. It steals consciousness, it lies deeper than thought. It is always there, like a blackness in the eye, it discolours the world."
"Hartley made a permanent metaphysical crisis of my life by refusing me for moral reasons."
I can't pretend to have understood Charles' extremely conflicting intentions, the only source of discernment you get is other people's criticism of him, which he tries to divert in his writing:
Rosina: "You’ve lived in a hedonistic dream all your life, and you’ve got away with behaving like a cad because you always picked on women who could look after themselves."
James: "Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen."
Charles tries to persuade Hartley to run away with him, he tries to force her, he uses her adopted son Titus to won her back, but he eventually fails. It becomes clearer at this point that she doesn't share his feelings, though this Charles denies through self-asserted excuses.
At the book's enclosure, the life in the beach house boists with festive friends, summer nights and songs, Charlie's obsession with Hartley never ceases and he keeps secretly plotting to elope with her.
At this point, Charles experiences a succession of loss and decays slowly into a private hell: Titus is drowned, his friends start revealing how lowly they truly felt towards him then leave, Hartley and her husband cold-bloodedly leave to Australia, Charles' self-aggrandizing defense is shattered, he doesn't dare to write about his pain.
I think that Charles' most lucid, and certainly more humane thoughts come after events of death, he finally experiences loneliness, he comes to realise that it was an egotistical madness that fed his obsessions about Hartley, and that now there's a simple possibility that Hartley weren't pure and faultless but might as well be shrouded in a demonic filth.
"My love’s imagination gave up the real Hartley and consoled itself with high abstract ideas of blindly ‘accepting it all’."
This is a powerful venture into identity relativism: there's a question often asked through the novel, can one really change? The events drive that question to a dim conclusion that people will have always preserved an odious part of themselves that even trauma could not alter.
This is a book about a man reiterating his obsessions, revisiting them ad infinitum, without a final resolve. Much like life, the events described on Charles Arrowby's narrative journal rarely transcend his unreliable and excessive inwardness, there's a no faithful mirroring of what truly happened. The genius of Murdock in this novel lies precisely in personifying a man's--a megalomaniac--flow of consciousness.
Written in forms of interrupted journals, the retired playwright Charles retreats to an old beach house, a self-declared dialogue mnemonic, he goes about his days with an exhaustive prose of everything around him; he's in love with the sea, the seclusion suits him, at the peak of his isolation he has Jungian superstitions about sea monsters and ghosts living in the house, au-fur-et-à-mesure, he writes about the people he left behind in London, the women towards whom he felt resentiment, and talks profusely about his true first childhood love, Haretly.
The plot stirs suddenly from nothing happening to all the people Charles left behind slowly invading his life again.
Charles receive an emotional blow when he finds out that Hartley, lives in the village across from him, she is an old woman now who seem to have challenged wits and a dull character, she's married to what later Charles decides to be an abusive husband, he follows her relentlessly despite her strong objections, yet he spends dozens of pages concocting fantasies about her undoubtful great love for him, completely consumed by what seem to the reader at first, genuine and believable convictions.
"Jealousy is perhaps the most involuntary of all strong emotions. It steals consciousness, it lies deeper than thought. It is always there, like a blackness in the eye, it discolours the world."
"Hartley made a permanent metaphysical crisis of my life by refusing me for moral reasons."
I can't pretend to have understood Charles' extremely conflicting intentions, the only source of discernment you get is other people's criticism of him, which he tries to divert in his writing:
Rosina: "You’ve lived in a hedonistic dream all your life, and you’ve got away with behaving like a cad because you always picked on women who could look after themselves."
James: "Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen."
Charles tries to persuade Hartley to run away with him, he tries to force her, he uses her adopted son Titus to won her back, but he eventually fails. It becomes clearer at this point that she doesn't share his feelings, though this Charles denies through self-asserted excuses.
At the book's enclosure, the life in the beach house boists with festive friends, summer nights and songs, Charlie's obsession with Hartley never ceases and he keeps secretly plotting to elope with her.
At this point, Charles experiences a succession of loss and decays slowly into a private hell: Titus is drowned, his friends start revealing how lowly they truly felt towards him then leave, Hartley and her husband cold-bloodedly leave to Australia, Charles' self-aggrandizing defense is shattered, he doesn't dare to write about his pain.
I think that Charles' most lucid, and certainly more humane thoughts come after events of death, he finally experiences loneliness, he comes to realise that it was an egotistical madness that fed his obsessions about Hartley, and that now there's a simple possibility that Hartley weren't pure and faultless but might as well be shrouded in a demonic filth.
"My love’s imagination gave up the real Hartley and consoled itself with high abstract ideas of blindly ‘accepting it all’."
This is a powerful venture into identity relativism: there's a question often asked through the novel, can one really change? The events drive that question to a dim conclusion that people will have always preserved an odious part of themselves that even trauma could not alter.
warning_about_sophie's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
piscero's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
3.75