The Works of Muriel Spark

[jaghetersimon]

I'm a huge Muriel Spark fan and I was saddened to hear of her death. Any one else ?

[Deleted]

I love the nasty wit that some British authors display. Beryl Bainbridge and Hillary Mantel and Muriel Spark are three of my favorites.

I like The Girls of Slender Means and A Far Cry From Kennsington although The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is probably her best known novel because of the play and movie.

Miss Spark wrote an on line Diary for Slate magazine. In it, she reflects on being uncomfortable walking down the stairs in front of a man. She always thought one of them might push her down the stairs.

Here's another excerpt:

Thursday, Dec. 12, 1996, at 3:30 AM ET

A young woman reviewer of my latest novel, Reality and Dreams, complained that some of my characters are "nasty." I should have thought they were far worse than that; they are downright insufferable, even outrageous, and are supposed to be. I don't know why it is, but even in these feminist days, there exists a body of ladylike reviewers (and perhaps readers, although I put in a query here) who feel that women writers should write novels of boring virtue. I have always marveled when people have described to me, either in fiction or in real life, a creature who "hasn't a mean bone in her body," or who is "incapable of a mean thought." Who are these freaks of the human race, and where? I have never met them and hope I never will, arch-hypocrites as they most certainly are. One product of an immaculate conception in the history of religion is surely enough. And besides, to be "incapable of a mean thought" would surely cut us off from that imaginative empathy with the weaknesses of others that makes our imperfect world go round. Even that great English writer of the last century, Cardinal J.H. Newman, declared he could not conceive a novel without sinful characters.

The emphasis is mine. And I couldn't agree with her more. I always loved her "nasty" characters because she made me understand their "nastiness".

[jaghetersimon]

Thanks for that link, Chatchien! She really was an amazing woman. Have you read her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae? Her early years in Africa, with her very mentally ill husband, sound terrifying. No wonder she's so adept at showcasing nastiness...