Iris Murdoch's first novel is a gem — solid and sparkling. Set in a part of London, where struggling writers rub shoulders with successful bookies, and film starlets with frantic philosophers. Its hero, Jake Donaghue, is a drifting, clever, likeable young man who makes a living out of translation work and sponging on his friends. Meeting again, after some years, an old flame, Anna, he is led into a series of fantastic adventures. Iris Murdoch has wit, great power of invention and a knack for producing absurd incidents with a serious undertone and tender episodes with an edge of satire. Robust, full of flavour and panache, here is one of those rare novels which equally make one laugh and make one think.

The quiet life of schoolmaster Bill Mor and his wife Nan is disturbed when a young woman, Rain Carter, arrives at the school to paint the portrait of the headmaster. Mor, hoping to enter politics, becomes aware of new desires. A complex battle develops, involving love, guilt, magic, art and political ambition. Mor's teenage children and their mother fight discreetly and ruthlessly against the invader. The Head, himself enchanted, advises Mor to seize the girl and run. The final decision rests with Rain. Can a 'great love' be purchased at too high a price?

Gertrude has lost her husband and Anne, an ex-nun, her God. They plan to live together and do good works. Tim is a different sort of soldier. He plans to live off rich friends. Who will judge whom in this story?

This is the story of nine people, each of whom is looking for love, and the resulting complex relationships between them. Impelled by affection, lust, lost scruple, illusion and disillusion, wanting to be free yet needing to be involved, these characters perform the linked figures of their destiny.

Marian Taylor, who has come as a 'companion' to a lonely woman in a remote castle, becomes aware that her employer is a prisoner, not only of her own obsessions, but of an unforgiving husband. Hannah, the Unicorn, seemingly an image of persecuted virtue, fascinates those who surround her, some of whom plan to rescue her from her dream of redemptive suffering. But is she an innocent victim, a guilty woman, a mad woman, or a witch?

«Edmund has escaped from his family into a lonely life. Returning for his mother's funeral he finds himself involved in the same awful problems, together with some new ones. He also rediscovers the eternal family servant, the ever-changing «Italian girl».»