Iris and her friends
Subtitle: a memoir of memory and desire
By: John Bayley.
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Published: 2000
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 275
Subjects: Murdoch, Iris -- Marriage; Bayley, John, 1925- -- Marriage; University of Oxford -- Biography; Novelists, English -- 20th century -- Biography; Philosophers -- Great Britain -- Biography; College teachers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Married people -- Great Britain -- Biography; Alzheimer's disease -- Patients -- Biography; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography
Genres: Biography.
Description: "John Bayley began writing Iris and Her Friends, a sequel to the New York Times bestseller Elegy for Iris, late at night while his wife, the beloved novelist Iris Murdoch, succumbed to Alzheimer's Disease. In a Proustian irony, as Iris was losing her memory, Bayley was flooded with vivid recollections of his own."--BOOK JACKET.

"Avoiding the gloom associated with his family tragedy, Bayley luminously brings to life in Iris and Her Friends the remarkable story of a philosopher whose novels celebrated the goodness of everyday existence.

In bursts of vivid, lyrical reverie, Bayley also recreates the unforgettable scenes of his youth: being born to a civil servant in colonial India; his epiphanic childhood vacations at the seaside English resort Littlestone-on-Sea, which gave him his first, important glimmers of adult consciousness; his discovery of the power of literature, especially the work of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Bowen, and Marcel Proust; and of course his long romance with Iris and its heartbreaking end."--BOOK JACKET.