A fifty-year vogue for "experimental" novels notwithstanding, Iris Murdoch continues, to all outward appearances, to write nineteenth century fiction. But if she avoids wordplay, unstructured plots, even the stream-of-consciousness, her novels are still experimental, but in Zola's sense, not Joyce's. Like her French predecessor, Murdoch believes that the novel can evaluate ideas; for her literature is "the most essential and fundamental aspect of culture … an education in how to picture and understand human situations." Thus, although she has written a number of philosophical essays, Murdoch seems uncomfortable with abstract pronouncements and repeatedly returns to the novel, where ideas about moral behavior can be acted out in recognizable psychologies and situations. To a great extent, the success of her novels depends on the rigor of the experiment; at best, they criticize, complicate, or even contradict her preconceptions, while at their worst, they serve as vehicles for expounding ideas they...