Books like The Unicorn

I love this book so much, but don't know what to make of it at all. It really is very like a unicorn itself: you try to explain it and you just sound crazy. How seriously should you take it? And yet is it not the very most serious thing that ever was?This is my first Murdoch. I'm reading her because I read an interesting article recently that suggested that she and I have some overlapping ideas about morality. Reading this book, I suspect it's more than that. We have some overlapping and intersecting ways of being in the world and with other people, congruent preoccupations.I want to contrast her with Mieville, who I found so hard -- not difficult but hard-edged. I ricocheted off the surface of him; he kept me at a great distance. This is the opposite: there is no surface, just interpretations, and we are already inside from the get-go. Way inside, like Effingham sinking in the swamp.(That's the one thing I didn't quite believe: why didn't that sinking change him more?)And that makes no sense, but you see, that's the crux of the matter: we are both neo-touchy-feely-ists. The most important sense is intuitive sense.(I like this very much, but am gently suggesting that I can't tell if it's a good book by any objective measure. But then, I don't suppose it has to be.)