The Nice and the Good
First edition cover
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| Author | Iris Murdoch |
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| Cover artist | John Stanton Ward |
| Country | England |
| Published | 1968 (Chatto & Windus) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 349 |
| OCLC | 457613 |
The Nice and the Good is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1968, it was her eleventh novel. The Nice and the Good was shortlisted for the 1969 Booker Prize.
The novel combines elements of the thriller and romantic comedy genres. It begins with the suicide of Joseph Radeechy, a civil servant, in his London office. His department head, Octavian Gray, asks John Ducane, the department's legal advisor, to investigate. Ducane soon discovers that Radeechy was a practitioner of black magic and that he was being blackmailed. His investigations threaten to implicate Richard Biranne, another senior member of the department.
A parallel plot details the complex romantic relationships among the residents and guests at Octavian Gray's seaside country house. These include Octavian's wife Kate, with whom Ducane is carrying on an intense platonic relationship, and Paula Biranne, Richard Biranne's ex-wife, who lives there with her two children. Also in residence is Mary Clothier, a widowed friend of the family whose teenaged son Pierce is in love with Octavian's 14-year-old daughter. Pierce's despair over Barbara's indifference leads him to swim into an underwater cave, endangering his own life and that of Ducane, who tries to rescue him. The novel ends with most of the characters paired off and a spirit of general reconciliation.
Aside from Radeechy's attempts at magic, the novel's many supernatural elements include a flying saucer sighting and Ducane's shapeshifting manservant, who claims to be the son of a mermaid. Many of the characters, especially Ducane, are concerned about the morality of their actions, reflecting Iris Murdoch's philosophical interest in the subject. Critics were divided over the novel's philosophical elements, which were praised by A. S. Byatt while Elizabeth Janeway found them uninteresting.
The Nice and the Good takes place in London and Dorset, England. Octavian Gray is a senior civil servant heading a government department in Whitehall. His seaside property, Trescombe House, is home to Octavian and his wife Kate and their 14-year-old daughter Barbara, as well as to the widowed Mary Clothier and her 15-year-old son Pierce, and the divorced Paula Biranne and her nine-year old twins Henrietta and Edward. Also in residence are Octavian's older brother Theo, and Willy Kost, a classical scholar and Dachau concentration camp survivor who lives in a cottage on the property.
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