" Books should have themes. I choose titles carefully and the titles in some way indicate something deep in the theme of the book. Names are important. The names sometimes don’t come at once, but the physical being and the mind of the character have to come pretty early on and you just have to wait for the gods to offer you something. You have to spend a lot of time looking out of the window and writing down scrappy notes that may or may not help. You have to wait patiently until you feel that you’re getting the thing right—who the people are, what it’s all about, how it moves. I may take a long time, say a year, just sitting and fishing around, putting the thing into some sort of shape."
Iris Murdoch - The Art of Fiction No. 117, the Paris Review
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| A depiction of one of the principal characters, Honor Klein, with her Samurai sword. "She had been standing before me, still holding the hilt in a two-handed grip, and looking down at one of the severed napkins." |
I've read a lot of Murdoch, but I don't think I have read this one. I love the cover on this edition. I can see why you were compelled to read it.
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