The mud of the lake is said to hide an old bell, which flew out of its tower after a nun refused to admit she’d been keeping a lover outside the abbey’s walls. Into this world Dora comes bumbling, upsetting its careful harmony. There’s the married couple seeking a new connection Toby, an 18-year-old student who thinks he wants to be a priest Nick Fawley, the sullen gatekeeper with a dark past and most compellingly Michael, the leader, who is wrestling with an agonising desire. Its inhabitants are all seeking spiritual reform in some way or another. The court is surrounded by verdant woodland and enclosed by a lake. The lay community is set up at Imber Court, a grand-but-decaying house next door to a 12th-century Benedictine abbey where none but nuns are allowed. After a brief fling Dora returns to him, now ensconced in a religious “lay community” in Gloucestershire. He is said to be “violent”, and his violence is enacted through his stifling and jealous behaviour. The story begins with Dora Greenfield, a 21-year-old woman who loves life and acts before thinking, running away from her art historian husband. There may not be identified witches in this book (there are nuns), but the word is significantly deployed twice, and where there is smoke there is fire. But I have a hazy feeling that it had something to do with witches. I’m not sure where I found out that I should read The Bell, Iris Murdoch’s 1958 novel about a religious community in western England.
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