I happened to go see The Banshees of Inisherin two days after I finished reading The Bell, and was struck by the thought that it succeeded in doing all the things that Murdoch had tried, but failed, to do in the novel. Both are works that combine an interest in realism, especially in character psychology and a sense of place, with an obvious drive towards symbolism and an exploration of more abstract, but universal, themes. Both are, then, deeply philosophical, while also aiming to be compelling stories.
I had expected to love Murdoch’s novel — mid-century British/Irish woman writer of philosophical fictions, yes please! — but I found it to be a bit of a slog. I did enjoy, in the first few chapters, the focus on a character who was largely opaque to herself; a woman named Dora who always did exactly the opposite of what she intended or decided to do, and was therefore simultaneously always on the move, but also stuck, in some larger metaphysical sense (she reminded me somewhat of the fascinating protagonist of Doris Lessing’s Good Terrorist). We begin with her as she joins her vile bully of a husband, Paul, at a lay community attached to a convent. The center shifts as the novel begins to take interest in some of the other people there, particularly Michael, the would-be priest who founded the community, and a young student named Toby who is, like Dora, a sort of ingenue outsider. The novel observes the group and their interactions for awhile, and then meanders its way towards more of a plot: on the eve of the delivery of a new bell for the convent, Toby discovers the old bell, the stuff of legend, at the bottom of the lake, and he and Dora concoct a scheme to swap the old for the new. This precipitates a series of revelations and crises which have less to do with the bell itself than with the deep underlying motivations and beliefs of the characters, the logical consequence of their various entanglements. The last third of the novel picks up steam as it rockets towards a denouement: something must happen, matters will come to a head. And they do, sort of. The point of the undertaking, it would seem, is the various ideas or positions being represented (faith, virtue, desire, love?), but, in the interests of realism perhaps, the novel is careful to avoid making any character too much of a cardboard cutout representing a specific idea. The result is that the characters are not particularly believable or interesting, but the ideas are also somewhat muddled. There is obvious symbolism, but of what, exactly? The point is unclear. So, to put it bluntly, I didn’t care.
The Banshees of Inisherin is seemingly more straightforward — the story of a man named Pádraic, whose best friend Colm abruptly decides that he no longer wants anything to do with him — yet somehow opens onto all kinds of other questions and themes, in part because the characters summon astonishing depths from very small interactions. So in addition to the two men, there is Pádraic’s sister Siobhán, a solitary book lover who, like Colm, has a certain amount of ambition, and a young man named Dominic, who is a kind of village outcast. There is, too, the evocation of a symbolic register, most obviously, via the civil war happening on the mainland of Ireland, which is insistently alluded to as being a crucial referent, but also in the outlandish and exaggerated turns that the story takes, which cry out to be interpreted in more metaphysical ways. And yet, though all these characters so obviously stand in for particular ideas (goodness, art, freedom, love, community), at the brink of caricature even, they are so convincingly and winningly played that you cannot help but care about them as people. The setting, the fictional Inisherin, also lends itself well to this dichotomy: the stunning beauty of the cinematography (much of it shot on Achill Island, off the west coast of Ireland) conveys such a vivid sense of place, but also has an other-worldly, slightly unreal quality (it’s just so ethereally gorgeous, you could watch the movie just to see it). The name Inisherin obviously evokes the Aran Islands, which occupy such an outsized place in Irish folklore that they have a kind of mythos to them — they are so freighted with symbolism that they can seem invented for the purpose. It’s all just so skillfully done, so perfectly balanced, this sense of concrete specificity and abstract universality, with some wonderful nods to genre as well. I loved it.
I won’t say that Banshees is perfect: I think that if you really wanted to chase down the meaning of it all, some of it is more straightforward than it seems. Smarter people than I likely have critiques. It is, perhaps, more rewarding to not press it too much. I don’t know. In contrast, I worked The Bell over much more thoroughly, pondering its various meanings for two hours with a book club — but we really didn’t get all that far. The exercise made me appreciate the book a little more, maybe, but mostly gave me a clearer sense of everything that I didn’t like about it. Though it did leave me somewhat curious about the representation of sex — or rather, the lack thereof, or certainly, the lack of any good sex, which seemed significant. I wondered, idly, if this suspicion of sex was a feature of other Murdoch novels as well, and indeed, if perhaps this is typical of many of the mid-century British women writers that I love so much. Something to keep an eye out for.
Kasia Reads 