Affiliates
| Works by
Dame Muriel Spark
(Writer)
[February 1, 1918 – April 13, 2006]
|
Profile created October 1, 2009
Updated October 22, 2009
|
Curriculum Vita: A Volume of Autobiography (1992,
2009)
The author of Symposium and The Prime of
Miss Jean Brodie explores her own life in an autobiography designed to
answer her reader's most-asked question, ""are your novels
autobiographical?""
-
The Finishing School
(2004)
College Sunrise is a somewhat louche and vaguely
disreputable finishing school located in Lausanne, Switzerland. Rowland
Mahler and his wife, Nina, run the school as a way to support themselves
while he works, somewhat falteringly, on his novel. Into his creative
writing class comes seventeen-year-old Chris Wiley, a literary prodigy
whose historical novel-in-progress, on Mary Queen of Scots and the murder
of her husband Lord Darnley, has already excited the interest of
publishers. The inevitable result: keen envy, and a game of cat and mouse
not free of sexual jealousy and attraction.
Nobody writing has a keener instinct than Muriel Spark for hypocrisy,
self-delusion and moral ambiguity, or a more deliciously satirical eye.
The Finishing School is certain to be another Spark landmark, an
addition to one of the world's most lauded and entertaining bodies of
work.
-
Aiding and Abetting
(2000)
In Aiding and Abetting, the doyenne of
literary satire has written a wickedly amusing and subversive novel around
the true-crime case of one of England’s most notorious uppercrust
scoundrels and the “aiders and abetters” who kept him on the loose.
When Lord Lucan walks into psychiatrist Hildegard Wolf’s Paris office,
there is one problem: she already has a patient who says he’s Lucan, the
fugitive murderer who bludgeoned his children’s nanny in a botched attempt
to kill his wife. As Dr. Wolf sets about deciding which of her patients,
if either, is the real Lucan, she finds herself in a fierce battle of
wills and an exciting chase across Europe. For someone is deceiving
someone, and it may be the good doctor, who, despite her unorthodox
therapeutic method (she talks mainly about her own life), has a sinister
past, too.
Exhibiting Muriel Spark’s boundless imagination and biting wit, Aiding
and Abetting is a brisk, clever, and deliciously entertaining tale by
one of Britain’s greatest living novelists.
-
Reality and Dreams
(1996)
Exhilarating, unpredictable, and up-to-the-minute,
Spark's twentieth novel is "as intricate and bright as the toy of a child
emperor" (John Updike). It introduces the reader to the sexual secrets,
the eccentric imagination, and the troubled family of a movie director.
Its voice sounds "unlike any other writer's: elegant, wise, sympathetic,
satiric - at once darkly sinister and brightly chipper" (People).
-
Symposium
(1991, 2006)
One October evening five posh London couples gather
for a dinner party, enjoying "the pheasant (flambé in cognac as it is)"
and waiting for the imminent arrival of the late-coming guest Hilda
Damien, who has been unavoidably detained due to the fact that she is
being murdered at this very moment…
-
A Far Cry from Kensington
(1988, 2000)
Set on the crazier fringes of 1950s literary London,
A Far Cry from Kensington is a delight, hilariously portraying
love, fraud, death, evil, and transformation. Mrs. Hawkins, the majestic
narrator of A Far Cry from Kensington, takes us well in hand, and
leads us back to her threadbare years in postwar London. There, as a fat
and much admired young war widow, she spent her days working for a mad,
near-bankrupt publisher ("of very good books") and her nights dispensing
advice at her small South Kensington rooming-house. At work and at home
Mrs. Hawkins soon uncovered evil: shady literary doings and a deadly
enemy; anonymous letters, blackmail, and suicide. With aplomb, however,
Mrs. Hawkins confidently set about putting things to order, little
imagining the mayhem which would ensue. Now decades older, thin,
successful, and delighted with life in Italy -- quite a far cry from
Kensington -- Mrs. Hawkins looks back to all those dark doings, and
recounts how her own life changed forever. She still, however, loves to
give advice: "It's easy to get thin. You eat and drink the same as always,
only half....I offer this advice without fee; it is included in the price
of this book."
-
The Only Problem
(1984, 1995)
Harvey Gotham refuses to believe it when the French
police tell him that his estranged wife is a dangerous terrorist. As far
as the police are concerned, that only serves to throw suspicion on Gotham
himself.
-
Loitering with Intent
(1981, 2001)
Muriel Spark in prime form: one of her most
enjoyable, complex, and instructive jeux d'esprit. "How wonderful
to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century," Fleur Talbot
rejoices. Happily loitering about London, c. 1949, with intent to gather
material for her writing, Fleur finds a job "on the grubby edge of the
literary world," as secretary to the peculiar Autobiographial Association.
Mad egomaniacs, hilariously writing their memoirs in advance—or poor fools
ensnared by a blackmailer? Rich material, in any case. But when its
pompous director, Sir Quentin Oliver, steals the manuscript of Fleur's new
novel, fiction begins to appropriate life. The association's members begin
to act out scenes exactly as Fleur herself has already written them in her
missing manuscript. And as they meet darkly funny, pre-visioned fates,
where does art start or reality end?
-
Territorial Rights
(1979)
-
The Takeover
(1976)
In the cool, historic sanctuary of Nemi rests the
spirit of Diana, the Benevolent-Malign Goddess whose priests once stalked
the sacred grove. Now Hubert Mallindaine, self-styled descendent of the
Italian huntress, has claimed spiritual rights to a villa at Nemi - a
villa with a view to kill.
-
The Abbess of Crewe
(1974, 1995)
An election is held at the abbey of Crewe and the
new lady abbess takes up her high office with implacable serenity. This is
a satirical fantasy about ecclesiastical and other kinds of politics. The
author has also written "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and "Girls of
Slender Means".
-
The Hothouse by the East River
(1973, 1977)
In 1973 Paul and Elsa are living in New York. In
1944 they were both involved in intelligence work in England, and with the
arrival in New York of Helmut Kiel, one-time German POW and lover of Elsa,
their past returns to haunt them.
-
Not to Disturb
(1971, 1977)
A storm rages round the towers of the house near
Geneva. In the library, the Baron, the Baroness and their secretary are
not to be disturbed. In the attic, the Baron's lunatic brother howls. But
in the staff quarters, the servants plan a lucrative tragedy - a crime
passionnel.
-
The Driver's Seat
(1970, 1994)
Lise, driven to distraction by an office job, leaves
everything and flies south on holiday - in search of passionate adventure,
the obsessional experience and sex. Infinity and eternity attend Lise's
last terrible day in the unnamed southern city.
-
The Public Image
(1968, 1993)
Annabel Christopher is a goddess to her adoring
Italian public, her loving husband part of her perfect image. To keep the
eager sycophants, ruthless paparazzi and anxious admirers under her spell
the image must be carefully cultivated. Only Annabel hasn't calculated on
the plans of her husband.
-
The Mandelbaum Gate
(1965, 2001)
To rendezvous with her archeologist fiance in
Jordan, Barbara Vaughn must first pass through the Mandelbaum Gate--which
divides strife-torn Jerusalem. A half-jewish convert to Catholicism, an
Englishwoman of strong and stubborn convictions, Barbara will not be
dissuaded from her ill-timed pilgrimage despite a very real threat of
bodily harm and the fearful admonishments of staid British diplopmat
Freddy Hamilton.
-
The Girls of Slender Means
(1963, 1998)
"Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England
were poor, allowing for exceptions," begins The Girls of Slender Means
Dame Muriel Spark's tragic and rapier-witted portrait of a London ladies'
hostel just emerging from the shadow of World War II. Like the May of Teck
Club itself--"three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly
hit"--its lady inhabitants do their best to act as if the world were back
to normal: practicing elocution, and jostling over suitors and a single
Schiaparelli gown. The novel's harrowing ending reveals that the girls'
giddy literary and amorous peregrinations are hiding some tragically
painful war wounds. Chosen by Anthony
Burgess as one of the Best Modern
Novels in The London Sunday Times Review, The Girls of Slender Means
is a taut and eerily perfect novel by an author The New York Times has
called "One of this century's finest creators of comic-metaphysical
entertainment."
-
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
(1961, 2009)
At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in
Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is
unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the
application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the
married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with the bachelor music
master, Gordon Lowther, and—most important—in her dedication to "her
girls," the students she selects to be her crème de la crème. Fanatically
devoted, each member of the Brodie set—Eunice, Jenny, Mary, Monica, Rose,
and Sandy—is "famous for something," and Miss Brodie strives to bring out
the best in each one. Determined to instill in them independence, passion,
and ambition, Miss Brodie advises her girls, "Safety does not come first.
Goodness, Truth, and Beauty come first. Follow me."
And they do. But one of them will betray her.
-
The Bachelors
(1960, 1999)
"Daylight was appearing over London, the great
city of bachelors. Half-pint bottles of milk began to be stood at the
doorsteps of houses containing single apartments from Hampstead Heath to
Greenwich Park, from Wanstead Flats to Putney Heath; but especially in
Hampstead, especially in Kensington."
So begins Muriel Spark's supreme 1960 novel The Bachelors. Our very
British bachelors come in every stripe: a barrister, a British councilman,
a detective, a very curious "priest," a hand-writing expert, a
terrifyingly blank spiritual medium, and a guilt-torn good Irish Catholic
boy who chews onions to inhibit any success with the opposite sex. Though
we first find them contentedly chatting in clubs and shopping at
Fortnum's, their cozy bachelor world is not set to stay cozy for long.
Soon enough, the men are variously, individually tormented -- defrauded or
stolen from; blackmailed or pressed to attend horrid seances -- until,
finally, they realize they are about to be plunged, all together, into the
nastiest of lawsuits.
At the center of that lawsuit, about to face the dock as well as the
prospect of unwanted fatherhood, hovers pale Patrick Seton, the medium.
Meanwhile, horrors of every size descend upon our poor bachelors -- from
the rising price of frozen peas ("Your hand's never out of your pocket")
to epileptic fits, musings about murder, and spiritualist mouths foaming
with protoplasm. And every horror delights: each is limned by Spark's
uncanny wit -- at once surreal, malicious, funny, and ultimately serious.
The Bachelors presents "the most gifted and innovative British novelist"
(The New York Times) at her wicked best.
-
The Ballad of Peckham Rye
(196, 1999)
Classic satiric novel of a blue-collar town.
-
Memento Mori
(1959, 2000)
Unforgettably astounding and a joy to read,
Memento Mori is considered by many to be the greatest novel by the
wizardly Dame Muriel Spark. In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets
a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone informs
each, "Remember you must die." Their geriatric feathers are soon
thoroughly ruffled by these seemingly supernatural phone calls, and in the
resulting flurry many old secrets are dusted off. Beneath the once
decorous surface of their lives, unsavories like blackmail and adultery
are now to be glimpsed. As spooky as it is witty, poignant and wickedly
hilarious, Memento Mori may ostensibly concern death, but it is a
book which leaves one relishing life all the more.
-
Robinson
(1958, 2003)
A suspense novel about three castaways marooned on
an island owned by an eccentric recluse. January Marlow, a heroine with a
Catholic outlook of the most unsentimental stripe, is one of three
survivors out of twenty-nine souls when her plane crashes, blazing, on
Robinson's island. Presumed dead for months, the three survivors must wait
for the annual return of the pomegranate boat. Robinson, a determined
loner, proves a fair if misanthropic host to his uninvited guests; he
encourages January to keep a journal: as "an occupation for my mind, and I
fancied that I might later dress it up for a novel. That was most
peculiar, as things transpired, for I did not then anticipate how the
journal would turn upon me, so that having survived the plane disaster, I
should nearly meet my death through it." In Robinson, Muriel
Spark's wonderful second novel, under the tropical glare and strange fogs
of the tiny island, we find a volcano, a ping-pong playing cat, a dealer
in occult as well as lucky charms, flying ants, sexual tension, a
disappearance, blackmail, and—perhaps—murder.
-
The Comforters
(1957, 1994)
In Muriel Spark's fantastic first novel, the only things that aren't
ambiguous are her matchless originality and glittering wit. Caroline Rose
is plagued by the tapping of typewriter keys and the strange, detached
narration of her every thought and action. She has an unusual problem -
she realises she is in a novel. Her fellow characters are also possibly
deluded: Laurence, her former lover, finds diamonds in a loaf of bread -
could his elderly grandmother really be a smuggler? And Baron Stock, her
bookseller friend, believes he is on the trail of England's leading
Satanist.
-
All the Poems of Muriel Spark
(2004)
Before attaining fame as a novelist (Memento
Mori, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), Muriel Spark was already an
acclaimed poet. In the seventy poems collected here, Muriel Spark works in
open forms as well as villanelles, rondels, epigrams, and even the tour de
force of a twenty-one page ballad. She shows herself a master of
unforgettable short poems.
-
All the Poems: Collected Poems
(2004)
Muriel Spark was a poet before she was a novelist:
All the Poems presents the full range of the poetry of one of the
most acclaimed modern British writers. Here are villanelles, ballads and
epigrams, as well as freer forms, all marked by brilliantly precise
observation and command of her medium. Her poems are witty, idiosyncratic
and haunting, transforming the familiar into glittering moments of
strangeness, revealing the dark music beneath the mundane. The edge of
danger and wry insights in Muriel Spark's poems are equally unforgettable.
'Although most of my life has been devoted to fiction, I have always
thought of myself as a poet. I do not write poetic prose, but feel that my
outlook on life and my perceptions of events are those of a poet, Whether
in prose or verse, all creative writing is mysteriously connected with
music and I always hope this factor is apparent throughout my work.'
-- Muriel Spark
Going Up to Sotheby's and Other Poems
(1982) -
Collected Poems
(1967)
-
Voices at Play
(1961)
Short stories and plays.
-
Open to the Public: New & Collected Stories
(1997)
A new collection by the master story-teller. These
stories are eerie and sometimes a little perverse, always delightful, and
as rich as her acclaimed novels. Open to the Public contains
thirty-seven marvelous stories, ten of which have never before been
published in the US. These stories offer a bouquet of unexpected
protagonists-faded aristocrats and ghosts, cleaning women and blithe
murderers, sinister children and a lecherous hanging judge, and even a
dragon. The settings of Open to the Public swing from England to
contemporary Italy, postwar Africa, the French countryside, an Austrian
village, and then back to the Portobello Road. Spark reorders reality in
odd ways; she probes beneath the veneer of social respectability to finger
undercurrents of madness-at the beginning of one of her tales, one can
never guess its end.
-
All the Stories of Muriel Spark
(2001)
Four brand new tales are now added to New
Directions' original 1997 cloth edition of Open to the Public. This
new and complete paperback edition now contains every one of her forty-one
marvelous stories, catnip for all Spark fans. All the Stories of Muriel
Spark spans Dame Muriel Spark's entire career to date and displays all
her signature stealth, originality, beauty, elegance, wit, and shock
value.No writer commands so exhilarating a style—playful and rigorous,
cheerful and venomous, hilariously acute and coolly supernatural. Ranging
from South Africa to the West End, her dazzling stories feature hanging
judges, fortune-tellers, shy girls, psychiatrists, dress designers,
pensive ghosts, imaginary chauffeurs, and persistent guests. Regarding one
story ("The Portobello Road"), Stephen Schiff said in The New Yorker:
"Muriel Spark has written some of the best sentences in English. For
instance: 'He looked as if he would murder me, and he did.' It's a nasty
piece of work, that sentence."
-
Complete Short Stories
(2001)
Muriel Spark is 'a wholly original presence in
modern literature' (Andrew Motion). This collection, which contains all
her published short stories together with some previously unpublished
work, amply displays Muriel Spark's extraordinary talent; her cool, biting
humour and unique vision of human nature. Ghosts and judges, priests,
murder and French chateaux: all the trademark Spark obsessions are here,
and much more besides.
-
Bang-bang You're Dead
(1982)
-
Collected Stories
(1967)
-
The Go-away Bird
(1958)
| |
| Related Topics Click any of the following links for more information on similar topics of interest in relation to this page.
Muriel Spark
Is Listed As A Favorite Of
(Alphabetical Order
By First Name)
James Magruder |
