In her fiction, Iris Murdoch's usual technique is to set a group of characters around some abstract theme, generally of a rather philosophical nature. Semi-allegorical as these figures are, they serve, through their varying situations and relationships, to illustrate, elaborate, and expand the central concept. In The Red and the Green, there is a slight change, the characters being placed around an event rather than an idea. But, in other respects, whether of technique or subsidiary preoccupation—the patterning of relationships, the charting of bizarre entanglements, moments of melodrama, and the frequent use of symbolism—this work is in the same tradition as the majority of Miss Murdoch's fiction, though noticeably less complex….

Formally, [The Red and the Green] has great neatness. The characters are confined to the members of one large and elaborately inter-related Anglo-Irish family; the action restricted, in place, to Dublin and its outskirts, and...