More Muriel

My stream of reading Muriel Spark doesn't look likely to come to an end any time soon - so was just so wonderfully prolific - and the latest one I've read is Territorial Rights (1979), given to me by Virago in their nice new edition, and reviewed over on Shiny New Books.  The copy I read, I will confess to you, was the copy given to me by Hayley after Muriel Spark Reading Week (and I gave the Virago copy to a deserving friend).

It's not in the top two or three Spark novels - or maybe even top ten - but it's still brilliant, with lots of recognisably Sparkian elements. Head on over to my Shiny New Books review to find out more...

Symposium - Muriel Spark

I really thought I had written about Symposium (1990) by Muriel Spark months ago, when I read it, but a quick search suggests that I, in fact, did not.  And that was foolish on three levels - (a) I've forgotten quite a lot about it, (b) it was a lovely gift from Karen/Kaggsy and thus part of Reading Presently, and (c) it's one of the best Muriel Spark books I've read.

In some ways, it is not simply a collection of people around a table, or a series of events, but a symposium of Sparkian traits and tricks - a pantheon of Sparkisms, characteristically condensed into only 140 pages.  There are (of course) the flashbacks and flashforwards which subvert the typical ways in which authors dispense information, and moments which would be big 'reveals' in most novels are slipped in incidentally.  There are self-important characters who dramatise their lives when nobody is really listening.  The narrative - as always with Spark - is darkly dispassionate, showing things happening without permitting emotion to enter the tone of the narrative, even for a moment.  Selfishness, cruelty, greed, avarice, and foolishness are all present in spades.  And, oh, I loved it.

The first words are definitely dramatic:

"This is rape!" His voice was reaching a pitch it had never reached before and went higher still as he surveyed the wreckage. "This is violation!"It was not rape, it was a robbery.

This is one of the pivotal moments of the narrative, despite appearing on the first page - the narrative weaves back and forth, with Spark's usual disregard for linear structure, with this burglary appearing repeatedly in the timelines of the various characters.  It is Lord and Lady Suzy who have been robbed, but this is not the only robbery which takes place; while the guests assemble at Hurley Reed and Chris Donovan's dinner party, another burglary is taking place...

The dinner party (or, indeed, symposium) is depicted in the present tense, and the conversations swirl snippily in Spark's inimitable style, conversationalists never quite on the same plane as each other, and logic never quite being followed.  And then Spark takes the reader back into the recent history of everyone at the table - and further back still, so that this slim novel encompasses Marxist nuns, a complicated case of possible insanity, and family tensions between a newlywed and his mother.

"I don't give it a year," said Hurley Reed.  He was referring to William Damien's marriage."

You might be able to tell that many of the specifics have now gone from my mind, as I read Symposium months ago, but quotations like the one above reveal why I love Spark so much.  That quirky way of expressing herself, so the reader is constantly being jolted in their expectations, and conventions of narrative being consistently disturbed.  And of all the Spark novels I've read (which is about a dozen, I think) this is probably my second favourite after Loitering With Intent.

Since it is an amalgam of everything that I love about Spark, and representative of so many of her characters and writing quirks, I can't decide whether it would make a brilliant entry-point for sampling Spark, or if it can only truly be appreciated by somebody who has already developed a love for Dame Muriel... maybe the latter; for us Spark appreciators, it is a delightful treat, of her best qualities neatly parcelled up.  Karen - thank you so much!


Others who got Stuck into it:

"What I read this time was a murder mystery but the really brilliant thing about this book is that next time I read it when doubtless [...] I’ll find myself reading a book about love, or obsession, or family, or friendship..." - Hayley, Desperate Reader

"Spark doesn't play to the emotions - I was watching them all from a distance, detached." - An Adventure in Reading

"A perfect little morsel of the macabre set against the backdrop of everyday life." - Polly, Novel Insights

Reality and Dreams - Muriel Spark

I'm away with my family for a few days, out of range of internet - the vicar escaping, post-Christmas Day!  I've scheduled some posts to appear, but I shan't be able to reply for a bit - and hopefully I'll be back with internet in time to write a post about the only one of my Century of Books that I've not yet finished!

If you were thinking that I'd had enough of Muriel Spark during Muriel Spark Reading Week, then think again!  One of the final books I've read in 2012 is her last of the 20th century, and third last overall - Reality and Dreams (1996).

Tom Richards - presumably a deliberately bland name - is a famous film director.  The first line of the novel, and thus the line which kicks off our impression of him, is archetypical Spark: 'He often wondered if we were all characters in one of God's dreams.'  And, with Spark's panache for combining surreality with restraint, she goes no further with that paragraph.  It hangs, so strangely, and we are shepherded straight to the second paragraph - where we learn that Tom Richards is recovering in hospital, having fallen out of a crane whilst directing a scene.  He broke nearly all his bones, but is lucky to be alive.

For the first few pages, reality and dreams swirl, as Tom fades in and out of lucidity.  I often have problems with the ways in which authors try to convey any mental distortion - whether disorientation or illness - as it usually seems clumsy and heavy-handed, or simply unreadable.  Spark, reliably, does it brilliantly.  Even something as simple as this conveys the disjointedness of time:

She poured out some milky tea.  He opened his eyes.  The tray had disappeared.

And then the complicated family arrive.  His wife Claire is patient and unshockable - and has affairs as often as he does, quite casually.  There is his angelically beautiful, but unvivid, daughter from his first marriage (Cora), and stolid, moaning, unattractive daughter from his current marriage (Marigold).  And there is the squabbling, self-absorbed cast of his film, originally called The Hamburger Girl - inspired by a brief sighting of a young woman at a campsite, who captivated Tom.

The various marriages in the family (some disintegrating), the cancelled and re-commissioned film production, the disappearance of one of his daughters and ensuing police search - all come together and interweave, creating a curiously mixed structure.  I think one of the most distinctive qualities in Muriel Spark's writing is that everything is always on the same level.  She refuses to get overly-dramatic about anything - possible kidnap and murder is treated in the same matter-of-fact way as Tom's physiotherapy, or the workings of the film shoot.  For it is, of course, the sphere of cinema which influences Spark's title:

that world of dreams and reality which he was at home in, the world of filming scenes, casting people in parts, piecing together types and shadows, facts and illusions

Apart from the mental disorientation at the beginning of the novel, there is never any wider suggestion that reality and dream might have been exchanged - but there is the possibility that fictitious events are starting, in a distorted way, to become true.  It's never overdone, but is a clever thread through a clever novel.  It's all quintessential Spark, and a perfect reminder of why she's one of my favourite authors.

Two More Sparks: The Abbess of Crewe and The Takeover

A couple more Spark novels this morning; later in the day I'll put up a more general post with some questions looking back over Muriel Spark Reading Week for y'all.

I decided to try and cover some of the Spark titles which others haven't read this week, and so in the past couple of days I read The Abbess of Crewe (1974) and The Takeover (1976) - consecutive novels from around the middle of Spark's writing career.  Turns out others have now posted about The Abbess of Crewe (including my own mother), but I'm still alone on The Takeover.  Or The Take-over, sometimes.  But Chris won a copy in my very brief competition on Facebook, so perhaps I won't be alone for so long.  Victoria/Litlove wrote in her excellent post that she's seen a lot of people this week say "this isn't one of Spark's best."  I'm delighted to say I've seen equal amounts of "this is my first Spark novel and I love her!" but, for these two novels, I'm going to have to say... they're not Spark's best.  But Spark's sub-par is still rather wonderful.  Onto the books.

The Abbess of Crewe is, the cover of my rather ugly edition informs me, a satire on the Watergate scandal.  (And, rather wonderfully, apparently a film starring Glenda Jackson called Nasty Habits.)  Now, I don't know a lot about the Watergate scandal, which happened over a decade before I was born, so Our Vicar gave me a quick rundown.  All I knew was that bugging was involved, and that seems to be the most salient detail for understanding the links with The Abbess of Crewe.  Who but Muriel Spark would transfer bugging and intrigue from politics to an abbey?  One which, indeed, uses both the Bible and Machiavelli's The Art of War.

Alexandra is the Abbess of Crewe at the start of the novella - after a chapter, Spark does her frequent trick of taking us back in time, to the period where Alexandra and Felicity both wish to win the 'election' for Abbess - supposedly without canvassing for votes, which is forbidden by abbey rules.  Alexandra is one of Spark's casually ruthless characters, without any strenuous sense of morality (which one might expect from a politician, but is amusingly strange from a nun).  She says wonderfully snarky/Sparky things like this:

"I don't deny," says the Abbess, "that by some chance your idea has been successful.  The throw of the dice is bound to turn sometimes in your favour.  But you are wrong to imagine that any idea of yours is good in itself."

Alexandra is not only determined to become Abbess, she is certain that it will happen.  Of course, the reader knows that it will - but it is curious that Alexandra is herself unswerving in this knowledge.  This sort of prelepsis is common in Spark, and always unsettling.  Another unsettling aspect is - and I can't think of other Muriel Spark novels where she does this - that The Abbess of Crewe is all in the present tense.  Usually that's a big no-no for me, but it works quite well here - because it gives the sense of constant surveillance.  And that's what's going on in the abbey: everyone's movements are recorded and observed, in the buildings and grounds.  And then there is the scandal caused by Felicity, and started by the theft of a thimble, alluded to in the first chapter, but rather a mystery to the reader...

My favourite character was one who was rather irrelevant to the plot - even in the slimmest of novellas (and this one comes in under 100 pages in my edition) Spark finds room for tangents, doesn't she?  Sister Gertrude is off in a far-flung corner of the globe, trying to convert cannibals, somewhere "unpronounceable, and they're changing the name of the town tomorrow to something equally unpronounceable."  She is called by telephone every now and then (somehow), is utterly unflappable, issuing the detached and bizarre aphorisms for which Spark is famous ("Justice may be done but on no account should it be seen to be done.")

The Abbess of Crewe is one of Spark's weirder books, and also one of the more amusing - on Thomas's wonderful Quirktensity Graph he puts it somewhere near the middle, but I'd put it in a very-quirky-not-very-intense position.  For people who know lived through the Watergate shenanigans, I imagine the whole thing would be even more entertaining - for me, it tipped the scales at a little too strange, but it was certainly the sort of novella nobody but Spark could have written.

* * * * *

The Takeover is probably my least favourite of the ten Spark novels I've now read - but it's still rather interesting, and good; everything is relative.  I intended this post to be brief, so I'll whip through The Takeover pretty speedily.  It's set in Italy and apparently (the cover again) it's a 'parable of the Pagan seventies', whatever that means.  Hubert and wealthy Maggie Radcliffe have parted ways; Maggie returns to the area with her new husband but Hubert refuses to leave her house, which is still filled with her furniture.  He busies himself secretly selling off her antique furniture and valuable paintings, replacing them with impressive fakes.  Oh, and Hubert 'considers he is a direct descendant of the goddess Diana of Nemi.  He considers he's mystically and spiritually, if not actually, entitled to the place.'  Here he is, in full Pagan action:

Again, standing one winter day alone among the bare soughing branches of those thick woodlands, looking down at the furrowed rectangle where the goddess was worshipped long ago, he shouted aloud with great enthusiasm, "It's mine!  I am the King of Nemi!  It is my divine right!  I am Hubert Mallindaine the descendant of the Emperor of Rome and the Benevolent-Malign Diana of the Woods..."  And whether he was sincere or not; or whether, indeed, he was or was not connected so far back as the divinity-crazed Caligula - and if he was descended from any gods of mythology, purely on statistical grounds who is not? - at any rate, these words were what Hubert cried.

That's a great example of how Spark writes her narratives: she does not interpret or judge, she simply presents the characters, their words and actions, and sits back to watch them.  In The Takeover, though, the stuff about Diana doesn't really seem too important until the final section.  Before that, it's all about money and lies.

There are plenty of characters - other neighbours, including Maggie's son Michael and his wife Mary; various effeminate ex-secretaries to Hubert; Pauline Thin, his current besotted secretary, etc. etc.  More or less all of them are concerned with embezzling from one another, without any sense of conscience-twinging going on anywhere.  That's one of the reasons I couldn't entirely get on board with this novella.  I'm used to Spark's characters being rather unapologetically ruthless - but here they are in the Evelyn Waugh school of selfishness.

The dynamics between Maggie and Hubert are interesting, as she tries unsuccessfully to takeover her own house, and there are certainly many moments of Spark's inimitable style ("How do you know when you're in love?" she said. / "The traffic in the city improves and the cost of living seems to be very low.") but I'm afraid on the whole I found it rather lacking in momentum.  Perhaps if I hadn't recently read several other Muriel Spark novels, and dozens of reviews, I'd have found the joy of reading her style sufficient - but the comparison has made me feel The Takeover a bit lacklustre.

So, a very brief review, I'm afraid.  I daresay one could write a lot about The Takeover, and if any of you are well-acquainted with 1970s Paganism, it would mean more.  For today's post I seem to have picked the two Muriel Spark novels which require the reader to have lived through the 1970s, don't I?  And interestingly, although both are ostensibly about religious activity, neither really have much to do with religion.  That's one of the few links I can see between these consecutive novels - except for both giving away huge plot twists long before they happen, in typical Spark style.

Of the five Spark books I've reviewed this week, I think her autobiography is my favourite - and, from the novels, I would choose The Only Problem, which keeps growing in my estimation since I finished it.  Later today, as I mentioned, there'll be a general discussion post - especially for non-blogging folk, but of course everyone else is welcome to comment too.  Keep posting your reviews, and letting me or Harriet know!  What fun!

Curriculum Vitae - Muriel Spark's autobiography

Another Spark review from me - three books reviewed in one day, gosh!  Although this one I actually read during Muriel Spark Reading Week, and I'm writing about it down in Somerset - where the book group my Mum runs have all been reading Muriel Spark.  I joined in their lovely lunch, chatting about Spark - everyone enjoyed reading her, although one lady (who had read The Abbess of Crewe, apparently one of Spark's weirder novels) was rather bemused.  I'm hoping Mum will write some reviews of the Spark novels she's read this week... hint hint...!

Once I've read a lot of an author's novels, I like to look into their life a bit.  (You can do the same, very quickly, with Katherine's piece.)  I prefer doing it that way around - so that I have formed my own opinions from the books, and can use biographical information to augment my interest, rather than act as a starting point.  Martin Stannard's biography of Muriel Spark was looming in one corner of my room, but it's enormous, so I went to the horse's mouth - Spark's 'fragments of an autobiography', Curriculum Vitae (1992).

I had been curious to discover quite how Spark would write an autobiography, since her novels so often eschew normal narrative structures and the reliable narrator.  Not that her narrators are particularly unreliable - just the question of reliability seems to be rather sidelined.  Well, in Curriculum Vitae she is very concerned with reliability (I've typed that so often it doesn't feel like a real [reliable] word any more...) and refuses to trust her own memory: 'I determined to write nothing that cannot be supported by documentary evidence or by eyewitnesses'.  But there are definitely signs of Spark-the-novelist in the structuring of the autobiography.  Her usual trick of playing around with time makes an appearance, but it's the enticingly disjointed beginning which made me realise Spark-the-autobiographer was no real distance from Spark-the-novelist.  She starts by writing about bread, under its own little subheading.  And then butter.  And so on.  It's an interesting way to structure a childhood, but I don't think any other method would suit this most unconventional of novelists.

Spark grew up in beautiful Edinburgh, amongst family and neighbours who were fairly poorly-off, but with many strict manners and customs - although her own parents seem to have been pretty fun.  I can't summarise Spark's many details about this upbringing, but it demonstrates how incredibly observant she was from an early age - and who knows what she left out, because she couldn't find corroborating evidence?  There are definite signs of the latent novelist in Spark:

I was fascinated from the earliest age I can remember by how people arranged themselves.  I can't remember a time when I was not a people-watcher, a behaviourist.

A while later, whilst completing her education at Heriot Watt College, she notes:

I was particularly interested in precis-writing, and took a course in that.  I loved economical prose, and would always try to find the briefest way to express a meaning.

There, I think, you have the two keystones of Spark's novelistic power.  She is endlessly perceptive, and always concise.

In the early section of the autobiography, the part which was of most interest to me (and might well be to others) was on Miss Christina Kay ('that character in search of an author') whose teaching inspired Spark, and helped inspire her most famous creation, Miss Jean Brodie.  Of course they are not the same - Spark is too good a writer to lift people straight from life, even if that were possible - but they shared a love of educating girls, of Mussolini, and art.  Spark shows how she used Christina Kay, and where she invented.  Indeed, Spark often finishes an anecdote by mentioning which short story or novel the event helped influence.  The following excerpt is an example of this, but also of the way Spark writes her autobiography with the same unusual, out-of-kilter twists she presents so often in her novels:

Just round the corner in Viewforth lived Nita McEwen, who resembled me very much.  She was already in her first year at James Gillespie's School when I saw her with her parents, walking between them, holding their hands.  I was doing the same thing.  I was not yet at school.  It must have been a Saturday or Sunday, when children used to walk with their parents.  My mother remarked how like me the little girl was; one of her parents must have said the same to her.  I looked round at the child and saw she was looking round at me.  Either her likeness to me or something else made me feel strange.  I didn't yet know she was called Nita.  Later, at school, although Nita was in a higher class and we never played together, our physical resemblance was often remarked upon.  Her hair was slightly redder than mine.  Years later, when I was twenty-one, I was to meet Nita McEwen in a boarding house in the then Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.  There, our likeness to each other was greatly remarked on.  One night, Nita was shot dead by her husband, who then shot himself.  I heard two girl's screams followed by a shot, then another shot.  That was the factual origin of my short story 'Bang-Bang You're Dead'.

Perhaps I should elaborate on the self-confessed disastrous marriage which led to her life in (then) Rhodesia; her cunning escape back to Britain during World War Two; her hilarious account of working for the Poetry Society (which helped inspire Loitering With Intent); the various dramatic and often calamitous personal and professional relationships Spark had... but I want you to read Curriculum Vitae yourself, so I shan't.

Spark finishes this autobiography at about the time her first novel, The Comforters, was published.  She talks of a second volume, and it is such a shame that this volume never appeared - I would love to see her take on literary circles and the trappings of fame - but what Spark has written is wonderful enough.  Curriculum Vitae has all the energy and unusual qualities of a Spark novel, with the added joy of acting as a centre from which all her other works are spokes.  Once you've read three or four (or so) Spark novels, I recommend you hunt this down and see her bizarre take on real life - it's further evidence of her claim (I believe) to being one of the 20th century's greatest writers, and certainly one of its most original.

Two Sparks: The Ballad of Peckham Rye and The Only Problem

Although I'm actually writing this in advance of Muriel Spark Reading Week, I'm confidently going to predict that we're all having a great time, and that you're all putting up brilliant, thought-provoking pieces on this wonderful novelist... yes?  Yes.

Since it's my day to post, I'm going to write fairly speedily about two Spark novels that I've read recently - and hopefully by the end of the week I'll have finished at least one more.  (There will be no shortage of Spark reviews around the blogosphere this week, but if you fancy reading all my archive posts on Spark, including this one, click here.)  I chose The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960) because my supervisor said it might be a useful comparison to Lolly Willowes, and The Only Problem (1984) because it looked really interesting, and also one that I hadn't seen mentioned anywhere else in the blogosphere.  Cutting a long story short, I thought they were both brilliant - neither take the crown away from Loitering With Intent as my favourite Spark novel yet, but both add to my cumulative for Spark.  You'll be avidly reading Spark posts here, there, and everywhere, so I'll try to keep my reviews brief... and hopefully enough to intrigue you to read them!

The Ballad of Peckham Rye is centred, indeed, in Peckham Rye - and concerns the arrival and influence of one Dougal Douglas (sometimes going by the name of Douglas Dougal.)  The novel opens with the aftermath of a bride being jilted at the altar - indeed, with the bride's mother insulting the jilting groom.  It's all a little confusing (deliberately, one imagines) and it's difficult to get the story straight - especially since everyone is superimposing their views and imaginings over the facts.  The brief chapter concludes:

But, in any case, within a few weeks, everyone forgot the details.  The affair is a legend referred to from time to time in the pubs when conversation takes a matrimonial turn.  Some say the bridegroom came back repentant and married the girl in the end.  Some say, no, he married another girl, while the bride married the best man.  It is wondered if the bride had been carrying on with the best man for some time past.  It is sometimes told that the bride died of grief and the groom shot himself on the Rye.  It is generally agreed that he answered 'No' at his wedding, that he went away alone on his wedding day and turned up again later.

This is a great example of how Spark plays irreverently with the normalities of narrative.  And if the reader expects everything to be neatly unfolded by the end of the novel, then he/she clearly hasn't read much Spark before.  She obeys few authorial 'rules', and weaves her narratives with little concern for the reader's expectation.  If she were writing a play (and she has; I should read them) she would unveil Chekhov's gun in the first act, and nobody would ever lay a finger on it again.

But as someone notes on the first page of The Ballad of Peckham Rye, "It wouldn't have happened if Dougal Douglas hadn't come here."  She is quite right... although it is difficult to trace exactly how Dougal Douglas influences the community, his influence is undeniable.

He turns up somewhat out of the blue, and starts working at 'Meadows, Meade & Grindley, manufacturers of nylon textiles, a small but growing concern.'  His role is fairly vague.  Mr. Druce, the head of the company, is keen to hire 'an Arts man', and Mr. Druce places Douglas Douglas in charge of 'human research.'

"I shall have to do research," Dougal mused, "into their inner lives.  Research into the real Peckham.  It will be necessary to discover the spiritual well-spring, the glorious history of the place, before I am able to offer some impetus."

This research, it appears, chiefly constitutes attracting the workforce from their duties, calmly meddling in their lives, and undermining their confidences.  Dougal is all things to all people, and yet (although it is never asserted directly) it appears he might be an incarnation of the Devil.  He certainly has growths in his temple which rather resemble sawn-off horns - and the events which ensue from his presence have rather the hallmark of evil.

It is a fascinating concept, and one which has Spark written all over it.  She never gives us the certainty (as Sylvia Townsend Warner does in Lolly Willowes) that we are dealing with the Devil.  There isn't really certainty about much, for either the reader of the residents of Peckham Rye - but events spiral and, although the jilted bride is not the worst of the calamaties, it is a structural close to Dougal's presence and the circular narrative itself.  All is done with Spark's brilliant detached authorial voice, with doses of the surreal and strange interwoven with the commonplace and starkly observational.  Brilliant.

* * * * *

The Ballad of Peckham Rye was Spark's fourth novel; The Only Problem comes somewhere towards the end of her almost half-century of novelising - but they are unmistakably by the same author.  The concept is quite different, but the manner of approaching it is still very Sparkian.  I say that the concept is different, but thinking about it, these two novels both concern the nature of evil, in some way - though both rather skirt round the issue.

'The Only Problem' of the title is, according to Harvey Gotham, the problem of suffering.  Accordingly, he has taken himself off to the French countryside to write a monograph on the Book of Job, and his mind rarely wanders from this topic.  His own suffering seems to take the form of interfering relatives and his ex-wife Effie, whom he abandoned in Italy over a stolen chocolate bar.  The sort of premise which makes me know I'm in the delightfully odd world of Muriel Spark.

Amongst the cast are Effie's sister Ruth, and Ruth's husband (Harvey's old student friend) Edward.

Edward used to confide in Harvey, and he in Edward, during their student life together.  Harvey had never, to Edward's knowledge, broken any of these confidences in the sense of revealing them to other people; but he had a way of playing them back to Edward at inopportune moments; it was disconcerting, it made Edward uncomfortable, especially as Harvey chose to remind him of things he had said which he would rather have forgotten.

That is a very Sparkian relationship.  I can't think of any uncomplicated friendships in the eight Spark novels I've read - there is always some element of uneasiness or sharpness, or simply the failure to communicate naturally which characterises so many exchanges throughout her work.  I love conversations and plot expositions which subvert the normal rules in some way, or ignore the anticipated responses - it's on the reasons I love Ivy Compton-Burnett - and here is an example from The Only Problem.  There are some spoilers in it, so skim past if you want to avoid them:

Anne-Marie had put some soup on the table.  Harvey and Ruth were silent before her, now that she wasn't a maid but a police auxiliary.  When she had left, Ruth said, "I don't know if I'll be able to keep this down.  I'm pregnant."

"How did that happen?" Harvey said.

"The same as it always happens."

"How long have you known?"

"Three weeks."

"Nobody tells me anything," Harvey said.

"You don't want to know anything."

We aren't long in the cerebal world of theological exegesis.  Effie - it is claimed - has become involved in a terrorist organisation, and the police think that Harvey is also somehow implicated.  In vain does he protest (although never especially animatedly - Spark's characters tend towards the calm and detached) that he hasn't spoken to Effie for years.  The rest of The Only Problem follows this mad chain of events - Harvey calmly continuing to offer his readings of Job, while the police interrogate him and his wife's motives and actions remain mysterious.

Spark doesn't, however, permit the obvious parallels.  A lesser novelist (had they been able to think of the juxtaposition) would have used the wider action of the novel as an example of the problem of suffering.  Instead, like in all the novels I've read by her, Spark just lets things happen.  There isn't really any rhyme or reason, or grand overarching narrative point; there are no neat conclusions, just the brilliance of Spark's eccentric but observant writing.

So, two more gems to the Spark canon!  I'm so pleased Muriel Spark Reading Week gave me the encouragement to read more Spark.  Do continue to put links in the comments box, if you've reviewed a Spark novel or written anything about our Muriel - and I hope you're having a fun week!

Remember, You Must Die

It's been so long since I wrote a proper review that I'm wondering whether or not I can still do it... I don't know about other bloggers (I would be interested to know, actually) but it usually takes me an hour or more to write a full-length book review on here. And whilst I love doing it, I do seem to come to my laptop most evenings too tired to do anything that complex! So, if this turns into a series of zzzzzzzz somewhere in the middle, you'll know why. Still, I am always amazed, flattered, and delighted that anybody would want to read my musings on the books I read - so thank you in advance!

In fact, that's as much as I managed to write last week, before getting too sleepy and going to bed. I didn't even get as far as writing the title of the novel - which is Muriel Spark's Memento Mori (1959). Congratulations to Terri for correctly working out the book from my clues.

Giving Muriel Spark a second chance is one of the best results of blog-reading, for me. The enthusiasm of Simon S and Claire led me back to Spark, after finding a couple of her novels a bit underwhelming six or so years ago - and, as regular readers will know, I now adore her. Over the past couple of years I've read The Driver's Seat, Loitering With Intent, and Not to Disturb - and I have plenty on my tbr piles. I fancied seeing what my book group in Oxford would think of Muriel Spark, and so picked one almost at random because I liked the title. Memento Mori it was.

Despite coming quite early in her career, when Spark was only just over 40 years old, the novel concerns almost exclusively old people. Many of these live on a ward, where their different classes and personalities are swept away into being termed 'Granny Duncan', 'Granny Barnacle', 'Granny Trotsky' etc. But others amongst the sizable cast of characters still live in their homes - notably Dame Lettie Colston, her philandering brother Godfrey, and his wife Charmian, once a famed novelist and now suffering Alzheimer's. These three are all heading towards their three-score-and-ten. In the first few pages, Lettie is visiting her sister-in-law, and their choppy dialogue reveals both the extent of Charmian's declining faculties, and the irreverent but grounded approach Spark takes.

"Did you have a nice evening at the pictures, Taylor?" said Charmian.

"I am not Taylor," said Dame Lettie, "and in any case, you always called Taylor Jean during her last twenty or so years in your service."

Mrs. Anthony, their daily housekeeper, brought in the milky coffee and placed it on the breakfast table.

"Did you have a nice evening at the pictures, Taylor?" Charmian asked her.

"Yes, thanks, Mrs. Colston," said the housekeeper.

"Mrs. Anthony is not Taylor," said Lettie. "There is no one by the name of Taylor here. And anyway you used to call her Jean latterly. It was only when you were a girl that you called Taylor Taylor. And, in any event, Mrs. Anthony is not Taylor."

Godfrey came in. He kissed Charmian. She said, "Good morning, Eric."

"He is not Eric," said Dame Lettie.

What makes me love Spark - and, indeed, what made me underestimate her six years ago - is her style. It is understated, so that a fast read through reveals little of its richness - Spark can even feel a bit bland at that pace. But once I'd stopped and begun to appreciate her writing, I realised how brilliant it was. Unsentimental, a little discordant, wry, ironic, and ever so slightly surreal. The first words of chapter five illustrated what I mean: 'Mrs. Anthony knew instinctively that Mrs. Pettigrew was a kindly woman. Her instinct was wrong.' Spark keeps the reader of his/her toes - conventional emotions or responses are dangled before the reader's eyes, then turned on their head. We had an interesting discussion at book group about whether or not Spark's style was funny. I suppose it isn't. Certainly not in the way that Wodehouse is, or Stella Gibbons is, or Austen can be. But it's an experience - a tone which diverts and engages and draws me in.

But I have yet to address the central momentum of the novel. On the opening page, Dame Lettie receives an anonymous phone call; a voice simply saying 'Remember you must die.' In fact, it is the ninth time she has had this call. But she is not the only victim - increasing numbers of people get the same phone call, with the same words (even if they cannot agree on the voice). Everyone from Charmian to the Inspector investigating the case receives the same message - each responding to it in different ways. Some are scared, some indignant. Mrs. Pettigrew (involved in a very Spark-ian blackmail plot) simply wipes it from her mind. Charmian gives the best response: "Oh, as to that, for the past thirty years and more I have thought of it from time to time. My memory is failing in certain respects. I am gone eighty-six. But somehow I do not forget my death, whenever that will be." The response of the anonymous caller? "Delighted to hear it. Goodbye for now."

If this were an Agatha Christie novel, then the Inspector would gradually eliminate characters from suspicion, and we'd witness an elaborate denouement, discovering that the least likely person had actually done it because they were the twin sister of someone who everyone thought had died decades ago, etc. etc. Whilst I love Dame Agatha, I've now enough experience with Dame Muriel to suspect it wouldn't work quite like that. I shan't spoil the surprise, but suffice to say that the outcome is unmistakably Spark-like.

There are any number of subplots in this slim novel, and dozens of characters. Memento Mori, whilst excellent, isn't quite as accomplished as some of the other, later books I've read by Spark - and I agree with the original New York Times reviewer that she could have achieved more had she included less. Occasionally I had to flick through the pages to work out which character was which. But there are a central few (the ones I have already mentioned) who are striking and memorable - with starkly human qualities coming through the veneer of quirkiness.

I don't think I'd recommend Memento Mori as a starting point for somebody wanting to try Spark - it might just be a bit overwhelming. Having said that, several people at my book group were reading Spark for the first time, and wanted to read more. I'd still put Loitering With Intent into the hands of anyone eager to sample Dame Muriel - but Memento Mori, for the Spark fan, is a wonderful slice of the bizarre and acerbic. It is not quite unsettling, but it certainly isn't cosy. There is humour, but mostly there is the delight of being carried along by an author who is entirely in control of her tone, with never a misplaced word or errant sentence. Perhaps, were I fifty years older, I would also embrace Spark's profundity - but, for now, I'm going to place it back on the shelf, anticipating picking it up again in a few decades' time. I rather suspect it will have changed a lot.

Laura, who joined my book group this month, later emailed a link to a really good article by David Lodge on Memento Mori, which I recommend you read - here it is. If I haven't convinced you, then I think Lodge might.

Loitering With Intent - Muriel Spark

32. Loitering With Intent - Muriel Spark

I do love the blogosphere... all the bloggers and blog-readers, and all the talk of books going on all around the place. I am probably a little hypocritical, in that relatively few of the books I read come from blogger recommendations. So much of my reading time is taken up with book group choices and the occasional review copy (not to mention, of course, all the books I have to read for my studies) that when I can be self-indulgent and simply pick something off the shelf, nine times out of ten it'll be something I've been saving for years, or know that I'll like. If I read a great review, quite often I'll buy the book or pop it on a bit of paper somewhere, but it's not all that often that I'll have the reading space for it to swoop to the top of the pile. Bloggers - you're setting me up for my retirement. I just need the career bit in between.

Which makes me realise that I should find some more hours in the day, to fit in all your fab suggestions. If it weren't for the blogosphere, I probably wouldn't have bothered with Muriel Spark again. I'd read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Girls of Slender Means, and not been bowled over by either of them. It was a couple of bloggers who made me pick up The Driver's Seat, and I loved it. I reviewed that novella here, and it led to a discussion of 'Third Time Lucky' - when the third book you read by an author is the one to grab you.

Well, if third time was lucky, fourth has unearthed a gold mine, if that mixing of metaphors works. When I wrote about The Driver's Seat I asked which Spark I should read next, and 'N' (gosh, isn't that mysterious?) recommended Loitering With Intent. I have a feeling someone else did, maybe even in Real Life - and so I took myself off to the library and borrowed it. The return date was hastening, and I thought I'd take it with me to Devon.

All of which is a lengthy introduction to saying that Loitering With Intent (1981) is possibly my favourite novel read this year, and certainly proves to me that Spark is very much my cup of tea. (By the by, I don't think I like any of the covers I've seen, so I've just gone with the one I read. Spark deserves a nice cover designer! I hope someone's listening...) Maybe it's too well known to get onto my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About, but I won't take the risk of not broadcasting how good it is...

Loitering With Intent somehow manages to be an incredibly clever novel, without being in the least self-congratulatory or off-putting. Even more dangerous, Spark's novel is narrated by a novelist, and largely concerns the writing of a novel - so many pitfalls to avoid, and so much potential pretension - all of which Spark skirts around without even a hint of self-importance. Fleur Talbot is writing her first novel, Warrender Chase, and it is occupying all the time that she isn't at work, and quite a lot of her thoughts when she is at work. Her job is as a secretary to Sir Quentin Oliver and his Autobiographical Association - he has gathered luminaries and 'characters' to write their memoirs, which he will seal in a vault for seventy years.

Fleur is not dissimilar from her near-namesake Flora in Cold Comfort Farm, inasmuch as she sits back and records the eccentrics and strange creatures around her. But where Gibbons' Flora documented - she got involved with their lives no end, of course, but never really seemed unduly affected by their idiosyncrasies - Fleur isn't so invulnerable to the bizarre behaviour by which she is surrounded. It rather seems to rub off on her. She grows varyingly attached to various members of the Autobiographical Association, such as snob and scented Lady 'Bucks' Bernice Gilbert, and young(ish) Maisie Young, who has one permanently disabled leg and is fixated upon the Cosmos and 'how Being is Becoming'. Above all, Flora develops a fondness for Quentin's mother Edwina - a mad, lively, incontinent, and be-pearled old lady bursting with character, but somehow more 'real' than many old-women-with-gusto who crop up in fiction. In amongst these weave a whole cast of wonderful creations - focally, Dottie: the wife of Flora's lover. Flora is an odd sort of Catholic...

As I have said, Flora is not invulnerable to the group's eccentricity - and we're never quite sure how far we can trust her narrative voice, or to what extent we are supposed to identify with it. Which, since Fleur is an authoress, is interesting. Throughout the novel the reader gets glimpses of a treatise or two on novel-writing - how much of it is Spark's own view? Does Loitering With Intent have, hidden within it, the rudiments for a how-to of creative writing? Impossible to judge... but here are three snippets which I enjoyed pondering:

But since then I've come to learn for myself how little one needs, in the art of writing, to convey the lot, and how a lot of words, on the other hand, can convey so little.


** (I changed "beautifully" to "very well" before sending the book to the publisher. I had probably been reading too much Henry James at that time, and "beautifully" was much too much.)
**
I knew I wasn't helping the readers to know whose side they were supposed to be on. I simply felt compelled to go on with my story without indicating what the reader should think.

But Fleur's writing doesn't end with her work-in-progress. As part of her secretarial duties, she has to edit the submissions of the Autobiographical Association. Spark is very funny about Fleur's low estimation of the group's writing abilities, and the manner in which Fleur augments the perceived dullness of their memoirs:

The main character was Nanny. I had livened it up by putting Nanny and the butler on the nursery rocking-horse together during the parents' absence, while little Eric was locked in the pantry to clean the silver.

As a hint of what is to come, it turns out that Fleur's flight of fancy does, in part, turn out to be truth. Which Stuck-in-a-Book reader could fail to notice similarities to Miss Hargreaves?

This becomes the crux of the novel - where does Fleur's imagination end, and where does plagiarism begin? Similarities between the Autobiographical Association's activities and the manuscript of Warrender Chase grow ever greater - how much is coincidence, how much does Fleur absorb, and how much does she write before it happens? The parallel stories - both (of course) fiction, but one accepted as 'true' in the novel; fiction and meta-fiction, if you're feeling in that mood - intertwine and overlap, and Spark does it all so very, very cleverly. I won't say any more.


As with all my favourite novelists - and Spark could swiftly join that group - style contributes heavily to my appreciation. Spark is sharp, witty, and sees straight through any form of dissemblance. I need to revisit The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Girls of Slender Means sometime, as I must have missed something. I'm late to the party on this one, but the latest converts are the most enthusiastic - I foresee more Sparks being read before 2010 is over. Thank you, blogosphere!

The Driver's Seat

I'll kick off with the first novella I read at the weekend... although, first, a detour via the word 'novella'. Peter questioned the criteria for a novella - and he has a point. In the research I did once about short stories, the general consensus seemed to be that there was no strict definition for the novella. It's basically just a short novel, without necessarily any structural differences from a novel proper - and who can determine what qualifies as 'short'? Rather arbitrarily, I said 200 pages - but font and margin sizes can mean that 150 pages of one book would be 300 pages of another, and I didn't have time or energy to make word count estimates... so 200 pages was the number I chose to signify novella! As it turned out, of the seven I read The Driver's Seat (1970) by Muriel Spark was the thickest, at 160 or so pages - although I suspect it had fewer words than some of the others.

The Driver's Seat came with recommendation from Simon S, as did one of the other titles this week - so thanks Simon! It was also, apparently, recently in contention for the 'lost Booker' of 1970. I have read some Muriel Spark before (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Girls of Slender Means) and, while I certainly enjoyed them, they didn't quite click. The Driver's Seat definitely did.

It tells the story of Lise, a woman who leaves work to fly south on holiday... but Lise is an oddball of the oddest variety. She is looking for her 'type' and isn't afraid to accost strangers to tell them so - but, when pressed, isn't sure what her 'type' is - just that she'll know when she finds him. We first meet Lise whilst she is buying clothes for her holiday - settling on a dress: 'a lemon-yellow top with a skirt patterned in bright Vs of orange, mauve and blue' along with a red/white striped coat. "Of course, the two don't go well together" says the salesgirl - but Lise thinks otherwise, and welcomes the attention such a brash outfit gives her.

About thirty pages in, the reader gets a bit of a shock. Although it comes quite early on, I won't mention it here - suffice to say, it throws the rest of the novel into some sort of waiting game, the reader never being quite sure where they stand. Spark's prose is deliberately - and deliciously - disorientating. We move in and out of Lise's thoughts, never quite grasping hold of her perspective, nor yet letting it slip entirely out of reach.

Eventually Lise takes a ball-point pen from her bag and marks a spot in a large patch of green, the main parkland of the city. She puts a little cross beside one of the small pictures which is described on the map as 'The Pavilion'. She then folds up the map and replaces it in the pamphlet which she then edges in her hand-bag. The pen lies, apparently forgotten, on the bed. She looks at herself in the glass, touches her hair, then locks her suitcase. She finds the car-keys that she had failed to leave behind this morning and attaches them once more to her key-ring. She puts the bunch of keys in her hand-bag, picks up her paperback book and goes out, locking the door behind her. Who knows her thoughts? Who can tell?

The ending didn't come as a huge surprise to me - Spark leaves an enormous clue - but, as with Lise's travel throughout the mysterious city, the journey is easily as important as the destination. I finally see what is so special about Muriel Spark, and will definitely be on the hunt for more of her work now. Suggestions welcome...