Iris and Her Friends: A Memoir of Memory and Desire

by John Bayley (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.24

  John Bayley began writing Iris and Her Friends, a companion to the New York Times bestseller Elegy for Iris, late at night while his wife, the beloved novelist Iris Murdoch, succumbed to Alzheimer's Disease. As Iris was losing her memory, Bayley was flooded with vivid recollections of his own. In lyrical reverie, Bayley recreates the unforgettable scenes of his youth, from his birth to a civil servant in colonial India to his long romance with Iris and its heartbreaking end. This is the transcendent work of a brilliant man, whose examination of the tragedies and joys of his own life will give readers great healing insight. John Bayley's Iris and Her Friends is nothing less than a classic of true love and sorrow. Love makes every beautifully formed sentence, every generously shared moment, shimmer and sing. -Donna Seaman, Los Angeles Times Book Review

• Used

  Hardcover
  1999

  $3.24

  The last month or so of the life of novelist Iris Murdoch, the wife of the author, provides the framework for this biography. Within this structure the author enters into extensive memories of the past. It brings to li fe the author's own childhood, from his birth in colonial India to his epiphanic holidays in the seaside town Littlestone-on-Sea, where he first discovered the power of literature. It looks too at Iris's early years to explain how they came together and how they were 'right' for each other. So in this book the author explains much more about himself and describes in much more details how he managed to cope with the ordeal of seeing his wife become terminally ill and lose her faculties. In this he quotes a considerable amount from literature, which is his own field of study.