“Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and dying as on a battlefield.” Memento Mori is Muriel Spark’s third novel and seems, at first, to be a simple mystery novel with a “whodunnit” to be solved. But Spark is Read More
The Bachelors, sets London as a stage on which its characters perform giving the reader the same intimacy as sitting in the stalls. In his introduction, James Campbell notes that this novel, first published in 1960, was written at a time when Spark’s career was taking a turn towards the theatre. This is, in many Read More
“What we are doing,” Tom told his crew, “is real and not real. We are living in a world where dreams are reality and reality is dreams. In our world everything starts from a dream.” This quote, from the final chapter of Muriel Spark’s Dreams and Reality, encapsulates the book’s title, and entices the reader Read More
As the title suggests, poverty is the central theme of Spark’s slim seventh novel, not just financial poverty but also a poverty of mind and spirit. Set primarily between VE Day and VJ Day, the novel’s central characters are the residents of the May of Tek Club, a boarding house in Kensington – For the Read More
“It wouldn’t have happened if Dougal Douglas hadn’t come here.” This February marks 100 years since the birth of Scottish author Muriel Spark. In celebration of her life and work, Birlinn will re-publish all her novels under their Polygon imprint to commemorate the occasion. The Ballad of Peckham Rye is her fourth novel, now out Read More
Coming a little later than halfway through Spark’s career, Territorial Rights is a romp. Set in Venice, the novel pulls together and twists half a dozen contrivances, and comes out with an almighty tangle. The plot begins with Robert Leaver, an English Art History student arriving in the Italian city, in pursuit of Lina Pancev, Read More
As someone whose only prior dealings with the works of Muriel Spark came from a forced reading of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie many years ago, I was far from sure that I was going to like A Far Cry from Kensington. However, the book came as a pleasant surprise. The story follows the Read More
There is nothing lukewarm about Muriel Spark. In her writing she displays all the extravagance of an eccentric mind. Her eighth novel is set in Jerusalem in 1961, when the Mandelbaum Gate segregated Jerusalem into Jordan and Israel. As Gabriel Josipovici explains in his fine introduction to the 2018 Birlinn edition, this novel is Spark’s Read More
I use “mad” of course in the colloquial sense. In the way that we’re all mad, you know. A little crazy, you know. Amongst ourselves, I mean – the intelligentsia are all a little mad and, my dear Caroline, that’s what makes us so nice. The sane are not worth noticing. It may not be Read More
“Do not lose hold of the name Hildegard Wolf,” warns narrator and renowned author Muriel Spark as she twists legend into a tale of stolen and recreated identities. With these words, Spark adeptly begins to deconstruct the relationship between detective and criminal in conventional murder mysteries. With its cast of unorthodox characters, Aiding and Abetting Read More