The Nice and the Good
opens with a revolver shot. A British civil servant has killed himself
in his London office. John Ducane, legal adviser to the government
department headed by Octavian Gray, is put in charge of the
investigation. John is more to Octavian than a coworker. He spends many
weekends at Gray's Dorset home and is "somewhat in love" with
Octavian's wife, Kate. And she with him, but not on the sly. Octavian
and Kate consider themselves happily married, and Octavian finds it
charming that his wife doesn't keep secrets from him. John knows that
he and Kate won't get past kissing and love letters, yet he's trying to
end a relationship with another woman because of Kate. He fears the two
women will find out about one another — which they do, and,
as John feared, Kate then feels differently about him, even though she
has no right to.
Such is the unusual state of relationships in an Iris Murdoch novel. The Nice and the Good
has a number of other more or less conventional pairings, some unexpected.
Manipulation is a common Murdoch theme, and in this book she uses it to
explore the difference between being nice and being good. Octavian and
Kate are oh so nice — always cheerful, gracious, welcoming
people to live with them — and think themselves good, but
they're really self-serving, meddling, and insensitive.
And what about that suicide investigation? Like the relationships, it
has bizarre twists. These include blackmail and black magic. Central
character Ducane descends into the underworld to get to the truth about
the suicide. His personal dilemmas yield another truth: that niceness
isn't enough, that "the best love is . . . a love of what is good."
Home
My
reviews
My
friends' reviews