Everything I read about this book before reading it went hard on the word 'empathetic', and correctly so. But the thing that's really great about it is that as well as understanding, Murdoch's also conscious of her characters’ flaws, and starts out a little cruel in her precise way of describing their failures and stupidity, which makes the emergence of who they are really sing (chime? like a bell?). I found it astounding, although this probably isn’t fair of me, that characters like Dora and Michael were written as they are when they were.
An explosion of themes and avenues for thoughtfulness. Yes, desire and religion and guilt, but also stuff more specific than that. The failings of hetrosexual marriage, the crumbling of country houses, youth and knowledge, community and enclosure. Wish I had a better context for the book: I know bits of the history and the literature it’s engaged with, but I'd like to have read it delibrately in conversation with those things. After all this time, I still crave the English course. What I'm really saying is that, although it's enjoyable as a story, I think it has things to say, and would benefit from deeper consideration, which is lovely. One of those books which makes you wonder why you've spent any time at all reading stupid things. Murdoch writes with incredible precision, and puts into words such specific feelings. There’s art to it, is what I mean. 
My edition's cover has such a scary nun on it. Misleading, but fun!