Muriel Spark (1918–2006)

In a typically contrary move, Spark chose to write her definitive novel about old age when she was barely forty, thus leaving herself free to write about teenagers when she was in her eighties...

Most of the characters in this book are at least twice the author's age, but you wouldn't think it: this is a book that seems to convey what it's like to be very old just as powerfully and convincingly as Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, Old Filth, or The dark flood rises. The characters see themselves show more as engaged in a constant struggle: How primitive, Guy thought, life becomes in old age, when one may be surrounded by familiar comforts and yet more vulnerable to the action of nature than any young explorer at the Pole. And how simply the physical laws assert themselves, frustrating all one's purposes. And there are still the effects of deceptions and love affairs from before the First World War working themselves out between the characters, there are relatives and hangers-on (many of them no longer young themselves) angling for legacies, there are the usual small catastrophes of everyday life, which have so much more impact than they used to, there is the threat of ending up in a Home or — far worse — in the Maud Long Ward(*) at the hospital, with no recourse other than the largely-empty threat to change your will. And to cap it all there is a mysterious voice on the telephone saying "Remember you must die".

Not much fun, clearly, but still surprisingly funny. show less

Ten sophisticated people sitting round a dinner-table in a posh part of Islington. In the short time that elapses between the hors d'oeuvre and the dessert we need to fit in about a dozen suspicious deaths, some Marxist nuns, a TV documentary everyone half-remembers, art-thieves, crooked manservants, a possible ménage-à-trois, a girl who's married her best friend's dad, a madman from the Kingdom of Fife, an Australian millionairess, the fruit counter at M&S in Oxford Street, and a show more preraphaelite beauty with a gift for being (at least) in the wrong place at the wrong time. Go on, Muriel, you can do it!

This is Spark at her zaniest, as usual with a hard edge somewhere just out of sight, but very much in the mood of The abbess of Crewe. show less

Basically, this is about a pleasant but wimpy woman (Maggie) with money who fails to evict a rather affable asshole (Hubert) who's manspreading all over her property without paying rent because he's an entitled loser who thinks he's descended from the goddess Diana. Curiously, Maggie has a (third?) husband who is also kind of a light-weight. The property belongs to her and predates their arrangements, so he makes vague noises and harrumphing instead of being a He-Man spouse and just throwing show more the sucker out. Deadbeat Hubert becomes ever more entrenched and kooky. All rather odd if you ask me. Alright, the barely-a-comedy of Manners goes spinning out of control, and by the middle it's taken a lot of bizarre twists involving the property, the criminals, Gauguin, the help, the plans for Lauro's wedding feast, and Pauline enjoying kisses... Absolutely everyone in the cast is busily taking over something or swindling someone, and the level of absurdity is quite amusing. And then there's the cult of Diana...

It's no wonder Ms Spark was made a Dame of the British Empire. She is certainly one of its more delicious treasures. show less

Jean Brodie is in her prime. At least that is what she says. She regularly informs her girls, her special set of students whom she is developing into the créme de la créme, that when one is in one’s prime, as she is, all manner of art and beauty is open to one. Mostly, however, her girls assume she is talking about sex. Maybe not when they were 10, when she first took them under her wing, but increasingly through the years in which they stay in close contact even after the two years she show more taught them directly. Her girls range from the bright to the dull, from the beautiful to the plain, but they all share an absolute devotion to Miss Brodie. Any act of betrayal on their part is almost inconceivable. And yet…

The writing here is marvellously subtle and playful as the narrator jumps between characters and over time-spans to reveal, early on, outcomes for the various girls. It is so light and knowing that you will be astounded at Spark’s reinvention of the school novel. If it is your first direct encounter with her writing, as it has been for me, you will immediately want to commit yourself to reading everything that Spark has written. But you’ll probably find yourself returning to Jean Brodie in her prime simply to admire the craft and sparkle of Muriel Spark’s prose.

Certainly recommended. show less