BRUNO'S DREAM by Iris Murdoch. 311 pages. Viking Press. $5.95.
Even the English, who send CARE packages to needy sheep dogs, have never made house pets of spiders. But Iris Murdoch often deals even-headedly with oddities. This time she has spun a touching tale of wayward love and wanly threatening death, centered around a moribund octogenarian named Bruno Greensleave, whose twilight passion is for champagne and arachnids.
The metaphoric potential is splendid. Spiders are often deadly—and creative as well, spinning out of their own innards the structures of their salvation. Their lives, which sometimes...
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