The Book and the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch

This is my first foray into Murdoch's extensive body of works and I am intrigued enough to continue. This book started out really strong and was able to sustain some level of momentum but it didn't quite reach the heights that I was anticipating it would. I felt that it dragged a little bit. The characters were all very intensely involved with each other, to the point to that it felt like reality TV or a soap opera.

I am a huge fan of books which are taken over by the characters' musings and analyses of situations and it certainly worked with this one. But I think I read this with the expectation that it would be filled with the characters discoursing about philosophy and Marxism. There were some hints of that but not as much as I would have liked.