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If you've lost a loved one to dementia, whether caused by Alzheimer's or strokes, you know that this dreadful change in your life can be--as a woman in Elegy for Iris notes so terribly--like "being chained to a corpse." You may feel you exist in a perpetual state of mourning, and release seems impossibly distant since the process of degeneration can last for a decade, fifteen years, or more.

Four years ago before this book was published, Alzheimer's began to chip away at acclaimed novelist Iris Murdoch and she started to lose memories, associations and connection with herself. Her husband of forty years, English critic John Bayley, has written a memoir about this escalating series of losses that is imbued with admiration, love, and gentle humor. Bayley compellingly interweaves descriptions of his wife's sad deterioration with stories of their courtship and long, contented marriage. What is remarkable about this narrative (which needed better editing, however), is that despite the very real tragedy of Alzheimer's, he is not bitter or self-pitying, and what links him and his wife now is anything but a chain.

Murdoch and Bayley seem to have given each other the freedom to live complete lives, however they needed to, and that freedom was a profound tie. "We were together because we were comforted and reassured by the solitariness each saw and was aware of in the other," he observes. And tracing their growing love for one another, he makes one envy the balance they found between separateness and companionship (which counterpoints their domestic squalor). From the earliest days onward, marriage and solitude were not contradictions for them. They could "be closely and physically entwined, and yet feel solitude's friendly presence, as warm and undesolating as contiguity itself."

All that reverberates strangely with the ways in which Murdoch now is shut off from him far more than she ever was as a creative artist, but seems to need the constant reassurance of his presence. She is like a child hungry for attention, but unable to communicate clearly, and sometimes needs to be gently shooed away so that he can have time to himself. Yet she returns, anxious, needful. Sometimes her confusions drive him into a rage, but she often responds to these outbursts with the same ameliorative calm she always had.

Given their long, happy marriage, Bayley and Murdoch's first meetings were comically inauspicious. In his late twenties and a graduate student teaching at Oxford after World War II, Bailey spied Murdoch bicycling past one day looking grumpy, grim, and not entirely attractive. Yet for Bailey, she was almost an apparition, a woman existing only in the moment--and for him alone. But his instantaneous fantasies were soon crushed when he met her at a party and realized she was merely another teacher. How ordinary! Worse still, she was clearly a popular and magnetic woman with many friends (and not a few lovers, he would learn). Though he tried, he never managed to make conversation with her that night, and when his next opportunity came at a dinner, he was daunted by the seriousness with which this philosophy teacher considered his most casual remarks.

On their first date he was oddly shocked by her brilliant red brocade dress which struck him as inappropriate for her, and she managed to fall down stairs as they entered a ball. But not much later they were laughing and sharing childhood confidences, and it's thanks to their childlike joy that the bonds between them were first knit, lasting even into her Alzheimer's. Rather miraculously, humor survives between them, even now that her memory has faded, leaving her incapable of finishing sentences and often lost in a state of "vacant despair." Bayley can still make Murdoch smile with silly jokes and rhymes. There's so much love (and quiet suffering) in Bayley's observation that a smile "transforms her face, bringing it back to what it was, and with an added glow that seems supernatural."

Murdoch's kindness, her affability, her lack of egotism about her career make for odd continuity with the generally sweet-natured woman she is under the spell of Alzheimer's, and Bayley's deep appreciation of these excellent qualities seems to undergird his current devotion. Time and again, the author makes the best of a bitter situation, and even finds aspects of it enjoyable. He manages, for instance, to find something delightful in regularly watching the British children's show "Teletubbies" with her. But all his fond memories and his loving attention to her in the present cannot veil the especial cruelty of watching a sharp-minded and fertile novelist "sail into the darkness," as Murdoch puts it herself in a moment of lucidity.

Among various literary subjects, Bayley has written about Henry James, and Elegy for Iris richly and warmly demonstrates a truth affirmed by a character in James's The Ambassadors: "The only safe thing is to give--it's what plays you least false."

Lev Raphael, author of LITTLE MISS EVIL, the 4th Nick Hoffman mystery.

A mysterious lady. A dashing young suitor. A love that overcomes all obstacles. Sound like Disney's latest flick? Not so. It's John Bayley's narrative Elegy for Iris, a stunning memoir for his wife Iris Murdoch. In this real life fairy-tale story with a not so fairy-tale ending, Bayley recalls his life with Iris before Alzheimer's robbed her personality of it's usual depth, as well as the change the disease wrought in her, and in his life with her.

Elegy for Iris is the wonderfully detailed, lovingly written story of Iris Murdoch's and John Bayley's life together, told from Bayley's point of view. It tells of their meeting, the growth of their relationship, their unusual marriage, and the change in their lives after Iris became afflicted with Alzheimer's. From Bayley's "lady on a bicycle" to swimming in seemingly every main river in France and England; from Iris' diary entry "St. Antony's Dance. Fell down the steps, and seem to have fallen in love with J. We didn't dance much." to their unusual marriage of solitude; Bayley has written his story to enchant and amaze.

Bayley's attention to detail, even seemingly those that are minor or irrelevant, can be seen throughout the book. His descriptions, for instance, of his various outings with Iris make the memoir much more realistic. "Our first swim was in a river of the Pas-de-Calais, a deep, placid tributary of the Somme...The next was much farther south, in a steep and wild-wooded valley, with pine and chestnut growing up the mountains. The water was warm, and the stream so secluded that we slipped in with nothing on", is only a part of Bayley's extensive descriptions of their honeymoon. Water plays a large part in their lives; whenever Bayley and Iris go somewhere new, they find someplace to swim there. Water seems to be a symbol of change, of their changing lives throughout their years together.

Bayley's attention to detail can also be a detriment to the reader, however, as it makes the story-line difficult to follow at times. When he begins to tell one particular tale, he often will break into many tangents, that can entangle the reader and detract from the focus on the main narrative. "Our host, who had been getting lunch, was quite a time getting to the door. He was a brilliant green eyed doctor named Maurice Charlton...Maurice Charlton probably worked harder than either of us, or than both of us put together, I should say....Maurice Charlton died young, of cancer, I believe, more than twenty years ago." This can be somewhat confusing, and occurs throughout the book.

The description that Bayley gives their marriage is a striking one, and is a continuous theme throughout Elegy for Iris. He describes "one of the truest pleasures of marriage [as] solitude", using the words of Australian poet AD Hope that marriage is designed to 'move [the partners] closer and closer apart.' This unusual description runs contrast to most peoples' beliefs on marriage, yet serves as a perfect description for Bayley's own marriage. "Such ignorance, such solitude! They suddenly seemed the best part of love and marriage. We were together because we were comforted and reassured by the solitariness we saw and were aware of in the other." This attitude seems predominant throughout the narrative, even after Iris is afflicted with Alzheimer's. The only difference, in Bayley's eyes, is that "the closeness of apartness has necessarily become the closeness of closeness." Bayley's view on marriage is a refreshing change from the normal stereotypes.

This book is thoroughly enjoyable and heartwarming, yet at the same time poignantly sad. To watch as Bayley slowly loses the woman who was his wife to a woman who recalls almost nothing of their life together, yet continues to cling to Bayley as if he were her last hope, is slightly depressing. Yet, as his memories show, Bayley and Iris lived a rich, full life together- it is heartwarming to watch them fall in love, marry, and grow together in their relationship. Bayley runs the full gamut of emotions in this personal narrative-and what's more, he makes the reader do the same.

This book is the story of a marriage, a life together of two enormously intelligent writers, John Bayley and Iris Murdoch. Bayley tells the story of their forty - two years of marriage at the same time he describes more closely the four last years in which Iris Murdoch suffered from Alzheimer's. He writes with humor and quiet understanding, and his obvious admiration and love for his wife speak throughout the work.
The cruelty of Alzheimer's is somehow underlined when the one who suffers is a person of extraordinary mind , a devotee of the life of the mind . Bayley honestly and painfully portays the strange kind of blankness and absence which the Alzheimer sufferer often displays. He does this against a background of the story of two lives, each of one has been lived in part in the great solitude of outstanding creator endeavor. But he also very good relating their shared experiences.
Bayley is also tactful and restrained about a certain assymetry in their relation, relating probably much more to the early years when Iris was involved with others. One nonetheless feels Bayley's restrained anger in his description of the ' master figure ' who for a time seemed to be a center of Murdoch's intellectual life.
What however impresses and makes this work remarkable is the steady gaze of love and intelligence with which Bayley sees , envelopes and protects Murdoch . This book is a work of love and pain, and of great beauty. It also provides much valuable insight into that terrible condition when the person is physically present but mentally lost.