The Time of the Angels by Iris Murdoch (1966)

So I went on from The Bell by Iris Murdoch (1954) to The Time of the Angels (1966). A grim, bleak descent and I think an artistic and moral failure. Don’t do evil says Google. Murdoch likewise should have stayed away from the depiction of the serious evil in this novel. London fog carries too much symbolic weight and moreover robs her of landscape at which she is very good. You might want to read it as a completist chore but best left out. There are plenty more where that came from. If I say anything about it spoilers will emerge. So there is the Anglican priest, and two girls a Russian caretaker, his son and a maid of all work living in a large house. An ogre, captive maidens, the good servant in a Castle Perilous. Initially there is a feeling that a Charles Williams diaphane will drop on the scene. That might have been better. Restriction is not her forte.

Non placet.