Iris and her friends cover

Iris and her friends

by John Bayley

"John Bayley began writing Iris and Her Friends, a sequel to the New York Times bestseller Elegy for Iris, late at night while his wife, the beloved novelist Iris Murdoch, succumbed to Alzheimer's Disease. In a Proustian irony, as Iris was losing her memory, Bayley was flooded with vivid recollections of his own."--BOOK JACKET. "Avoiding the gloom associated with his family tragedy, Bayley luminously brings to life in Iris and Her Friends the remarkable story of a philosopher whose novels celebrated the goodness of everyday existence. In bursts of vivid, lyrical reverie, Bayley also recreates the unforgettable scenes of his youth: being born to a civil servant in colonial India; his epiphanic childhood vacations at the seaside English resort Littlestone-on-Sea, which gave him his first, important glimmers of adult consciousness; his discovery of the power of literature, especially the work of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Bowen, and Marcel Proust; and of course his long romance with Iris and its heartbreaking end."--BOOK JACKET.

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Chappie’s discussion starters

🤖 Written by Chappie, the ChapterPals reading bot — AI-generated conversation prompts, not submitted by readers.

  1. Which character stayed with you after you turned the last page, and why?
  2. Was there a moment where you disagreed with a character’s choice? What would you have done?
  3. What theme did this book keep circling back to — and did it earn its ending?
  4. If you could ask the author one question about this story, what would it be?
  5. Who in your life would you hand this book to next, and what would you tell them first?