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Guilt, secrets, and lies haunt two men whose lives are bound by a long-ago tragedy in this "riveting" novel by the author of The Sea, The Sea (Los Angeles Times). Twenty years ago, Hilary Burde's story was one of remarkable success and enviable courage. Having brought himself out of a troubled childhood with only his intellect and wit, he was one of the most promising scholars at Oxford, a student with a rare talent for linguistics and an unquenchable drive. Until the accident. Now, forty-one and a decidedly ordinary failure, Hilary finds his quietly angry routine shattered when his old professor reappears in his life--a man whose own demons are tied to Hilary's and the tragedy from years ago. As the two men begin to circle each other once again, digging up old wrongs and seeking forgiveness for long-buried ills, they find themselves on a path that will either grant them both redemption or destroy them both forever. Haunting and emotional, A Word Child is an intimate look at the madness of regret by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of Under the Net and A Severed Head. … (more)
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The easiest reading of "A Word Child" is that it has to do with Hillary's past and how he copes with it when characters that know of his mistakes suddenly reappear in his life. I tend to think of it, however, as sort of a literary lab experiment to see what the lack of love and affection might do to a human being over time. Hillary's life isn't just unhappy, it's downright bleak, and the novel's setting -- a grey, cold foggy London winter -- fits it perfectly. He's a sort of case study in alienation, his emotions so starved that he doesn't much resemble a too many other literary characters I've met. Suffice it to say that if you find yourself identifying too closely with him, you should probably seek out professional help.
Alienation tends to be thought of as a fairly modern condition, but there are ways in which "A Word Child" is rather old fashioned: it was published, after all, right before personal computers became commonplace. All the big themes of English literature: class, love, revenge and marriage, have a big role to play, and it's slightly disorienting to see how much of the action takes place via personally delivered letters. Hillary, an "examination success story" is allowed to forget that he's always something of a curiosity when he meets with the people he used to know at Oxford. It's also, as I mentioned above, something of a classic London novel: Hillary rides the Underground obsessively and knows the city's streets better than some of its taxi drivers probably do. Much of the novel takes place in Whitehall in the very shadow of Big Ben. Even if they're not particularly interested in its thematic content, "A World Child" might find fans among Anglophiles and Londoners in exile.
Lastly, I should stress that while the world is full of unhappy people, Hillary's better educated and more articulate than most: he's the result of a bright future gone terribly awry. Murdoch's not afraid to write him, either. Her prose is dense, searching, erudite and yet perfectly flowing and balanced. I suppose it's a style that might be out of fashion now, but the book makes plain how finely the author honed her craft. It could, I suppose, be shorter, but why should it? Hillary is, by his own admission, a product of words, and, as the novel goes on, Murdoch shows him becoming increasingly aware of how his own choices -- the constraints that he has placed on his own life -- have made him and the few people he knows very unhappy. This is easy to say, but these realizations take time, so it seems appropriate, sometimes, that Murdoch take four hundred leisurely pages to do it.
In short, "A Word Child," though it offers some crumbs of absurd humor, is not a happy book about happy people. Murdoch, truth be told, never aims to give it the sort of resolution that might offer happiness as a prize to be sought. But it's a impressively wrought study in painful self-containment, a clear-eyed description of, as the saying goes, some people build for themselves. It's less overtly philosophical than I expected, but still a wholly admirable novel. I'm off to read something a bit more cheery now, thanks.
Burde is a thoroughly unlikable character. He’s weak, he’s narcissistic, he expects the women in his life to just orbit quietly around him until he has use for them. He has no ambition and no longer any dreams. Basically, he contributes little or nothing to the world. Despite this, Murdoch as managed to make the novel one I could not stop reading. I have to admit it was rather like watching a slow motion car crash, one where you wonder how many others he will take down with him this time.
Thankfully, the supporting cast members are more likable than Burde- well, most of them are. His office mates are pretty strange. All the supporting characters show themselves, ultimately, to have a lot more to themselves than Burde assumes- they have life, love, and volition beyond their association with him. A very good book all round, if you can take a main character who is a d**s***.
Whatever. Having struggled to get into the book I became fascinated to know what comes next and - from time to time - laughed out loud.
From a 1975 review published in Kirkus:
"There is an inescapable air of casuistry about Murdoch's plots: it's not hard to imagine her as a 17th-century Jesuit or Jansenist, settling suppositious moral hashes with the most enviable certainty. Here, in one of