Rating: 
Summary: Bifurcation
Review: Beckett read Descartes avidly (see his poem "Whoroscope") and his interest in Cartesian duality is evident here. Great energy is expended in ambivalence. This is the comedy of our Manichaean nature, our fitful search for quietude. Murphy exemplifies the tormented and divided comic flaneur, the clochard Beckett would reify and distill in later works. "Murphy" contains facets of the coruscating, opaque, almost unreadable early Beckett, as well as elements of his elliptical, spare, and grave later works. It is a transitional piece which nonetheless stands on its own.
Rating: 
Summary: Alas, i can only give it 5
Review: Garbage reviews, all of them. Even those on Beckett's side. Murphy is not a "transition" work. It is not immature. It is lapidiary, essential, unavoidable.
Rating:
Summary: For all those new to Beckett
Review: If you're sad, depressed, looking to bring your life meaning, DON'T BUY THIS BOOK! Beckett is for those looking for great existentalist drama, not for those looking for a pick me up. Still, check it out anyway.
Rating:
Summary: BECKETT TRIUMPHS!......SORTA
Review: Murphy works as a novel, up to a certain point. Like most Joycean influenced works, this novel sometimes loses itself in vague obscurities. The key to connecting with this work is how well you can connect to the main character. Whether you can do this or not determines the success or failure of Murphy. Like most 20th century human beings, Murphy is disillusioned with modern life, especially that part that requires us to work for a living. Murphy and Celia, his lover, are well drawn, but the other characters seem to be hastily assembled scenery. The phraseology the book uses is interesting at first but becomes distracting as you read more and more. This novel was very prophetic of our present, with our search for meaning in a capitalist society. It almost plays like a 1938 version of American Beauty. You should read this novel partly for enjoyment and partly to gain wisdom.
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Summary: Come to Nothing
Review: Murphy, as these other Amazon critics have suggested, is not Beckett's greatest work. Perhaps, though, it is his most lovable book, the last time he seemed to care so deeply about his characters. The final chapter even verges on sentiment-- and whoever accused Beckett of that? This is Beckett before he became the Beckett of fame, before he began stripping away all excesses. This is Beckett before the war, when he was still writing in English, when he was still under the influence of Joyce. Others have noted the facts. But the truth is that Beckett, even in the adolescence of his genius, was a strong enough writer to forge his own consciousness. A writer below commends the first sentence, and I concur. It's a beauty, recalling the verses of Ecclesiastes and foreshadowing the grim honesty of Beckett's future sentences. For a reader curious about Samuel Beckett, Murphy is a good place to start.
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Summary: funniest existentialist post joycean black comedy ever
Review: not only does this book have the best first sentence of any twentieth century book, its subtle and precise sentences illustrate an author in control of his language. whilst it may not appeal to those who find the interminable boredom of Godot somehow profound, it illustrates that Beckett could write structured narrative within a comprehensible plot if he wanted to. beckett's sympathy for his characters whilst at the same time ridiculing their pretensions in his own quiet way is austenian in its subtlety, and as an introduction to the later trilogy it is unmissable.
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Summary: Too much intent, honing the skills still yet . . .
Review: The theory that Beckett personifies is definitely in his first novel, MURPHY, yet his writing skills could not contain the beast later known as Beckettian thought. We do find the most loving, emotional character in all of Beckett in the form of a love struck prostitue, Celia, yet by the close of the text she is as emotionally vacant as the title character. Though the idea of illusion as delusion, which Albee would later cash in upon crops up, in this text, which I found intriguing. Lots of humor still which would taper off shortly after GODOT, starting with ENDGAME. Great black humor. Oh, an aside, have a dictionary handly, a good one, for this text is full of 5-10 dollar words, phrases, and quotes, some of which are quite arachic to say the least.
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Summary: Beckett is laughing at us all
Review: What is fascinating about a work such as this is the absolute division of opinions regarding the importance of this book. Murphy is a style unto itself. It is a story without an internal plot. The character Murphy is fueled only by his desire to desire nothing, and in search of this goal seem to get nowhere. The real message of the book is based solely in the question of existence. While Beckett does borrow and steal quite a bit of idealology form other notables, his expression of the Mind/Body Split and the concepts of the Id, Ego, And Superego, leave me stunned and hollow inside. An intense read, I reccomend a single sitting of about 5 hours, and have a friend or two read it seperately, then discuss. It can change your life. P.S. Beckett would think it absurd that I feel this strongly about his book.
Rating:
Summary: Murphy
Review: What's most telling is the quote from Beckett to CD producer and San Quentin Drama Workshop Artistic Director, Rick Cluchey, "The book is full of lies." We should not forget that Beckett was teaching literature at Trinity College in Dublin immediately prior to his writing "Murphy" and the book is strewn with false literary and cultural references, the sort that one usually accepts at face value and passes over. The book starts out with Murphy tying himself, naked, arms and legs included, into a rocking chair. Where the third hand comes from to tie down both arms is the mystery. Is this the same third hand that turns the gas jet on when Murphy and Ticklepenny rig the gas line to the garrot? We can only imagine how an awkward and diminuitive man like Murphy, who is measured in almost every physical detail, continually has the finest women (from Miss Counihan to Celia) swooning over him so completely. "Murphy" is full of wry comic bits. It is perhaps Beckett's only novel where he uses accents. Irish, Chelsea, Scottish, Hindi, German, all to great comic effect. He has no fear of inventing words like "Panpygoptosis" or Duck's disease; and certainly, everyone should actually play the chess game that Murphy has with Mr. Endon, enlightening. There is so much in this recording to appreciate; it's more of a radio play than a reading and the acting is wonderful. These are some of the finest Irish and English voices going. They make the novel accessible, or much as can be with out some sort of complete and unabridged dictionary. But most enjoyable was the unabashed send up of the theosophy so prevalent in the first half of the 20th century. This one is worth listening to (and reading along with, if you're of a mind) over and over again. What a delight.
Rating:
Summary: Sex, Lies, and Gasjets
Review: What's most telling is the quote from Beckett to CD producer and San Quentin Drama Workshop Artistic Director, Rick Cluchey, "The book is full of lies." We should not forget that Beckett was teaching literature at Trinity College in Dublin immediately prior to his writing "Murphy" and the book is strewn with false literary and cultural references, the sort that one usually accepts at face value and passes over. The book starts out with Murphy tying himself, naked, arms and legs included, into a rocking chair. Where the third hand comes from to tie down both arms is the mystery. Is this the same third hand that turns the gas jet on when Murphy and Ticklepenny rig the gas line to the garrot? We can only imagine how an awkward and diminuitive man like Murphy, who is measured in almost every physical detail, continually has the finest women (from Miss Counihan to Celia) swooning over him so completely. "Murphy" is full of wry comic bits. It is perhaps Beckett's only novel where he uses accents. Irish, Chelsea, Scottish, Hindi, German, all to great comic effect. He has no fear of inventing words like "Panpygoptosis" or Duck's disease; and certainly, everyone should actually play the chess game that Murphy has with Mr. Endon, enlightening. There is so much in this recording to appreciate; it's more of a radio play than a reading and the acting is wonderful. These are some of the finest Irish and English voices going. They make the novel accessible, or much as can be with out some sort of complete and unabridged dictionary. But most enjoyable was the unabashed send up of the theosophy so prevalent in the first half of the 20th century. This one is worth listening to (and reading along with, if you're of a mind) over and over again. What a delight.
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