Unfortunately, Nuns and Soldiers is another disjointed performance that asks a question once raised by radio soap operas: Can a recent widow find happiness with a young artist although she is pursued by a bogus Polish count, attended by an ex-nun and scrutinized by her late husband's family? The answer is a qualified yes, but the price of happiness is high in Murdoch's world—in this case, trial by fire and water. One might do well to brush up on Mozart's The Magic Flute; Murdoch certainly has. The artist refers to himself and his delightfully obscene mistress as Pappageno and Pappagena.

This is a world situated between life and art. Guy Openshaw dies of cancer but as a combination Odysseus-Shylock. Thus the ideal reader should know the Odyssey (Penelope and her suitors), The Merchant of Venice (a variation on the three caskets in the form of Guy's dying...