Acclaimed director Charles Arrowby absconds from London to a house on the English coast, where he hopes to spend his last years writing a diary and pondering past romances. When he learns that an old flame, Hartley, is living nearby, he deludes himself into thinking that she wants to leave her husband and rekindle their former relationship. Iris Murdoch is keenly attuned to the mechanisms of vanity and self-deception and narrates this tale of envy and murder—originally published in 1978—with all the fury and power of a Greek tragedy.