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A charismatic businessman casts a dark spell over others in this psychologically suspenseful novel by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Black Prince. Mischa Fox's name is known throughout London, though he himself is rarely seen. Enigmatic and desired, vicious yet sympathetic, he is a model of success, wealth, and charisma. When Fox turns his entrepreneurial gaze on a small feminist magazine known as the Artemis, his intoxicating influence quickly begins to affect the lives of those involved with the paper: the fragile editor, Hunter; generous Rosa, who splits her time and affections between her brother and two other men; innocent Annette, whose journey from school to the real world ends up being more fraught than she could have foreseen; and their circle of friends and acquaintances, all of whom find themselves both drawn to and repulsed by Fox. Told with dark humor, keen wit, and intense insight into the seductive nature of power, The Flight from the Enchanter is an intricate and dazzling work of fiction from the author of The Sea, The Sea and Under the Net, "one of the most significant novelists of her generation" (The Guardian).… (more)
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This is very much Iris Murdoch finding her voice, and although the style is still recognizably bold and unafraid when discussing touchy areas (like sexuality and violence), it is patchy in construct and doesn't add up to the 'whole' created by her later novels.
But this is Iris Murdoch, even if it's very early Iris Murdoch, so we know there has to be something else going on. The title is one obvious clue - the enigmatic, charismatic press baron Mischa Fox, mysteriously connected to so many of the characters, seems to exert his influence more as a magus than as a businessman, and his slimy sidekick Calvin Blick is also more sorcerer's apprentice than henchman. And there's that puzzling dedication to Elias Canetti. Could it be that there's a (twisted) parallel being made to Die Blendung/Auto-da-fé? Admittedly, the only character whose little world survives the book unscathed is the scholar Peter Saward in his book-cave, but the story of Rainborough and his manipulative ex-typist, Miss Casement, definitely has a Canetti flavour to it, as does that (with the genders reversed) of Rosa and the Lusiewicz brothers.
And then there's that gloriously silly opening chapter, a parody of the opening of Vanity Fair, which seems to promise us that Annette will become a subversive, scheming Becky Sharp, but then turns round and shows us her impulsive playfulness as a mere regression to childhood. And much more: you could probably get two or three essays out of the character names alone. A very complicated book, with a lot of not-quite-hidden depths that don't for the moment detract from the entertaining comedy (with a couple of background patches of real tragedy) going on in the foreground.
I actually enjoyed "The Flight From the Enchanter" more than most of the other Murdoch novels I've read. There's something direct about it that I enjoyed. While its characters are, at some level, obvious literary creations, they still come off as more real than they do in Murdoch's more ornate novels -- such as "The Sea, the Sea" -- which sometimes seem to verge on camp. As for the enchanter of the title, an obvious candidate for the role pops up, but the thing about this one is that all of its characters seem stuck in some way or another. They're besotted with somebody, or dependent on another, or have just given up inside. Some manage to make a fresh start at the end of the novel while others don't, and this, more than any of the plot machinations, is what I think really interests the author here. What keeps us going? Can we ever break free of our situations, or of ourselves? These are all great questions, and she deals with them expertly here. More importantly, perhaps, she offers some very good answers by the time the novel's done. As might be expected, this one isn't easy going, but it's still recommended.
Once I’d put down Enchanter, I went in search of all her other books, and then lay in constant wait for her to write the next, which she did, for years, every 18 or so months. Only her very last book, written while in the grip of Alzheimer’s, is not among my very favourite reads to this day. Enchanter isn’t her best book, for me that is The Sea The Sea, but it was the first I read. I loved Iris Murdoch from that moment on, and reading her made me think more deeply, write more avidly and dream great dreams.
The novel has a dedication to Elias Canetti who Wilson maintains was of "immense importance...as a representative of what she wanted to do with her life: her intellectual and literary career."
Canetti
And so one can see how Mischa Fox (Mister Fox perhaps), the Svengali to all the indecisive characters in this book, is likely to represent the spell that Canetti exercised over her.
Her novels, and "The Flight From the Enchanter (1955) is her second, "are often haunted by the spectre of a Magician, a Lord of Power who exercises spiritual or erotic dominion over the weaker characters in the book."
Quotes: A.N. Wilson, "Iris Murdoch as I Knew Her", (London 2003), pp.86-89