The Bell
When a group of well-meaning neurotics comes together in a lay religious community to try to forge a new and better life, the situation calls out all the humour and insight for which Iris Murdoch is famous.
The theme of her novel is the dark conflict between sex and religion, symbolized by the new and the old bells of the abbey convent across the lake.
Here is a story which again demonstrates this writer's unusual sensitivity and her talent for creating character.
There seems to be no limit to the self-destructive cancer of this family divided against itself. This is his Murdoch in frighteningly sombre mood. Never has she used to greater effect her talent for laying bare the deepest and most secret places of a human being.