This is my 130th post in Talk about books, so the newsletter is now 5 years old. The first post was in the middle of November 2020, This one, as you can see, comes at the end of November. The slight slippage comes from the fact that I was a week late with each of two posts earlier this year. I’m going to take December off and start year 6 in alignment with the calendar year, on 10 January. There might be a solitary post in December but it won’t be about books I’ve read, but (if it happens at all) about what to expect in 2026.

For about 49 years, ending earlier this year, I read nothing at all by Muriel Spark. In my early teens I read my mother’s copy of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) and found that it was not what I had been expecting. As well as that book, my mother had The Girls of Slender Means (1963) which I didn’t read, though the title had caught my attention. She had seen and enjoyed the film starring Maggie Smith as Miss Brodie and had Rod McKuen’s song, “Jean” on a 7" single. From what she had told me before I read the book, I had somehow got the impression that the title character, a teacher, was a flawed but lovable eccentric and an inspirational figure. This impression was somewhat shaken by my discovery that Miss Brodie admired Hitler and Mussolini and was (as far as I can remember after a gap of more than 50 years) not always a good influence on the girls she taught. Clearly I was missing something. I had a vague intention of rereading the book some day to see if I could make more sense of it, but that never became an urgent project.

A few years later, around 1974 or 75, I borrowed The Hothouse by the East River (1973) from the library. I didn’t get very far into it before I gave up and returned it. At the time, I was going through a phase: I had a strong preference for realism in fiction. It’s a phase that, while the strength of the preference has fluctuated from time to time, has lasted throughout the decades since. From the small amount I read, I didn’t know what to make of The Hothouse by the East River, but I was fairly sure it wasn’t realist. And that was my last attempt to read anything by Muriel Spark until 2025.

Partly because of the publication of Frances Wilson’s Electric Spark (2025), which I have no plan to read, I’ve been seeing Spark’s name a lot recently. When The Driver’s Seat (1970) appeared in the Penguin Archive series, it seemed the right time to resume my long-interrupted reading of her work. I had placed that book at the top of a short list derived from John Self’s “Where to start” guide on The Booker Prizes website. I followed The Driver’s Seat with Loitering with Intent (1981). I had intended to move on from that to The Public Image (1968) but I happened to see A Far Cry from Kensington (1988) in a bookshop so I bought that and read it.

Of the three novels I’m going to discuss in this post, there’s a marked difference in style between the two published in the 1980s and that from 1970. While The Driver’s Seat is told in the third person, both Loitering with Intent and A Far Cry from Kensington are first-person narratives. The earliest novel is detached, chilly in tone, its central character inscrutable, in that we learn what she wants, at least in outline, but we’re not given much of a clue as to why she wants it. The style in places seems to owe something to Alain Robbe-Grillet’s concept of “pure surface”:

She breathes deeply and deliberately, in and out, for a few minutes. Then she gets up, takes off her coat, and examines what there is of the room.

It is a bed with a green cotton cover, a bedside table, a rug, a dressing-table, two chairs, a small chest of drawers; there is a wide tall window which indicates that it had once formed part of a much larger room, now partitioned into two or three rooms in the interests of hotel economy; there is a small bathroom with a bidet, a lavatory, a wash-basin and a shower. (p. 46)

In contrast, the two later books seem warmer, more humane, with their narrators at the centre of the story. The impression is misleading. These narrators withhold from the reader a significant amount of information about their own motivations and about those they impute to others. Fleur Talbot, who is writing her first novel, Warrender Chase, in 1949 takes a job working for the Autobiographical Association, which is effectively the private fiefdom of Sir Quentin Oliver. The association has 10 members (about 6 of them still active), who are supposedly writing memoirs — “although none had got beyond the first chapter” (p. 19) by the time Fleur goes to work for the association. The memoirs are to be locked up by Sir Quentin for 70 years before eventual publication, to avoid the risk of libel. Fleur becomes convinced that Sir Quentin is up to something underhand, possibly using the memoirs to blackmail their authors. Later, though, she seems to suggest that he behaves as he does because he likes to control people, to make them do what he wants.

He supplies his autobiographers with Dexedrine, “doubting his power to enthral unaided” (p. 87). Several of them tell Fleur that “Sir Quentin insists on complete frankness” (pp. 68, 71, 82), which would be consistent with Fleur’s idea that he wants to blackmail them. Towards the end of the novel, Fleur tells Sir Quentin “You had this desire to take possession of people before I came along and reminded you of the existence of [John Henry] Newman” (p. 149). When he is killed in a car crash, she tells her friend Dottie, who had replaced her as Sir Quentin’s secretary, “The man was pure evil” (p. 161).

Dottie is the wife of Fleur’s “off and on” lover, Leslie, who soon takes up with a young male poet. Fleur at first encourages Dottie to join the Autobiographical Association but when she begins to suspect Sir Quentin of skulduggery she tears up Dottie’s manuscript memoir, for which Dottie doesn’t thank her. Dottie and Fleur are friends, though it’s soon clear to both of them that they don’t actually like each other. They are both Catholics but Fleur tells us that her beliefs are different from Dottie’s, without specifying what her own beliefs are.

I learned a lot in my life from Dottie, by her teaching me some precepts which I could usefully reject. She learned nothing of use from me. (p. 18)

Sir Quentin and Fleur both steal manuscripts from each other. Fleur maintains that most of Warrender Chase was written before she came to work for the Autobiographical Association, and she did not draw on her experiences there in writing the novel. In effect, she created a version of Sir Quentin before she met him. Sir Quentin persuades the intending publisher of Fleur’s novel that he would be at risk of proceedings for libel and/or breach of copyright, and orders Dottie to steal Fleur’s only copy. Fleur tells us that he has inserted excerpts from her novel into the autobiographers’ manuscripts to bolster the copyright claim, so she takes the manuscripts home with her to remove those extracts.

It’s never becomes clear to what extent we should believe Fleur’s version of events. The idea that she had written about Sir Quentin and his memoirists before she even met them is oddly appealing, but in the end not all that plausible. Perhaps we are meant to understand that her portraits of the characters in her current narrative (that’s to say, in the book Loitering with Intent itself) is shaped and coloured by her recollection of writing the earlier (and, of course, fictional) book. Or maybe she’s just lying about when she wrote the bulk of Warrender Chase. Anyway, if she thinks that Sir Quentin is “pure evil”, he claimed to think much the same as her. Dottie tells her:

“He believes you’re a witch, an evil spirit who’s been sent to bring ideas into his life. It’s his mission to turn evil to good. I think there’s a lot in what he says.” (p. 152)

One significant parallel between Warrender Chase and the events at the Autobiographical Association is that a character kills herself. In the main narrative it’s Lady Bernice “Bucks” Gilbert. Fleur agrees with the comment of Sir Quentin’s mother, Lady Edwina: “Suicide. Just like the woman in your novel” (p. 107). We do not learn what led to Lady Bernice’s death, but Lady Edwina later gives Fleur some pages torn from Sir Quentin’s secret diary, in which he records having written to her in these terms:

I thought in that moment ’twere sweet
to die. My dearest, I would that we
could die together. (p. 145)

Bucks Gilbert is not a major character in Loitering with Intent but her death is strikingly similar to the suicide of Wanda Podolak, who is a signifcant character in A Far Cry from Kensington. Wanda is a Polish dressmaker who lives in the same rooming-house as the book’s narrator, Nancy Hawkins. Like Fleur and Dottie in the earlier novel, Wanda was a Catholic. She believed that suicide was a mortal — and possibly unforgiveable, because unrepentable — sin, yet she killed herself. After Wanda’s death, Nancy is astonished to be told that Wanda received regular visits from Hector Bartlett whom Nancy detests.

Bartlett was a hanger-on of an established novelist, Emma Loy. He wanted to adapt one of Ms Loy’s novels for film and pestered Nancy for an introduction to a director of the publishing company for whom Nancy worked, whose uncle was a film producer. Whenever Nancy met Bartlett, she couldn’t resist hissing “pisseur de copie” at him.

I forget which of the French symbolist writers of the late nineteenth century denounced a hack writer as a urinator of journalistic copy in the phrase “pisseur de copie”, but the description remained in my mind, and I attached it to a great many of the writers who hung around or wanted to meet Martin York; and finally I attached it for life to one man alone, Hector Bartlett. (p. 43)

Nancy’s adamant refusal to withdraw or to stop using the insulting phrase about Barlett results in the loss of her job in publishing, an industry as she often has to remind people, in which openings are scarce and jobs in high demand. Unlike Fleur in the earlier book, Nancy doesn’t anathemize her adversary as “evil”, but she might as well do. At one point, while she is having lunch in a pub, she notices Barlett holding his sausage roll carelessly so that a dog is able to take a bite out of it. Bartlett slathers mustard onto what remains of the sausage roll and feeds it to the dog, to the distress of the animal, his owner and the onlookers.

After Wanda’s death the landlady, Milly, finds apparent newspaper cuttings under her mattress that Nancy recognizes as fakes that Bartlett had had printed to make Wanda believe she was under investigation and might be deported

As well as Wanda, Bartlett had also been a regular visitor to another occupant of the rooming-house, a younger woman, Isobel. She was a poorly paid secretary with a wealthy father. Isobel found herself pregnant, so a meeting was called to discuss the situation with her father and all the occupants of the house except Wanda. Isobel insisted that Hector Bartlett could not be the father.

“Oh, it’s one of those boys in Fleet Street or in publishing. You know how they promise to get you a job in publishing, and you sleep with them, and then they don’t know of any jobs in publishing and to be quite fair, it isn’t easy to get a job in publishing. Daddy doesn’t realize that.” (pp. 126–7)

It might be more accurate to say that Daddy, who is used to getting his own way, doesn’t accept it.

Eventually, Nancy got to read an article by Hector Bartlett, describing his involvement with Wanda from his point of view. Emma Loy, now living in New York, and having at last extricated herself from Bartlett’s grasp, had written a letter of recommendation to a new magazine where Nancy had been given a job as copy editor. The title of the article was “Radionics: A Power against Evil”. Radionics was a kind of mystical flim-flam practised by Nancy’s former boss, a director of the firm where she had worked in her second publishing job. It involved the operation of a mysterious “Box”. Nancy had seen the Box in Wanda’s while Wanda was alive and had recognized it, but Wanda had refused to explain why she had it in her possession.

Bartlett had concluded that the “effectiveness of the Box depended on the sensitivity and psychic skill of the operator” (p. 187). He described using a naturally skilled operator to curse an evil woman.

Since the victim of the curse was evil it was a benevolent accomplishment for the Organiser to induce the operator, a devout Catholic “with all the psychic energy of her faith” to effect this curse. Within a few months of treatment, the evil victim, an extraordinarily obese woman, began to waste away and was unable to hold down a job. (p. 187)

From Bartlett’s point of view the operation was a great success and good triumphed over evil, even if there was an unfortunate side-effect where the “operator” was concerned.

In this case, the operator, apparently weakend in her powers by terror of the priesthood and her reputation amongst Catholics, had to be dropped from the programme and, incidentally, eventually went mad and committed suicide. But that in no way detracted from the obvious success of the experiment during the months that the operator came gradually under the full control of the Organiser. For future experiments it would probably be advisable to choose operators free from the oppressive influence of the mass-religions.

“He must mean Wanda Podolak,” said Abigail. “Who is the poor fat woman?”

“Me,” I said. (p. 187)

So Bartlett evidently believed that Nancy was the evil monster who had to be destroyed, that he was fighting for the victory of Good over Evil, and that Wanda’s death was a price worth paying, and hardly worth bothering about. Obviously, he’s wrong about some of this, at least. If we take these two books together, the underlying principle seems to be that evil is real, but it’s not necessarily easy to spot: our own prejudices, blind spots and animosities may lead us to misidentify the malefactor. And if Bartlett is misleading himself as to Nancy’s supposed evil, might it not equally be the case that Fleur Talbot is doing likewise where Sir Quentin Oliver is concerned?

Perhaps I should say here that I don’t share the conception of evil apparently held by Spark and her principal characters. I don’t view it as a force that drives people to act or something in their nature that impels certain behaviours but rather as a category that we use to classify our worst actions. In other words, it’s not a quality that’s inherent in those actions so much as a way we use to describe them.

Anyway, it’s clear that both of these books are concerned with the collision of the impulse to suicide with Catholic (or more generally Christian) principles. The third book, the earliest of the three, is different from them in tone as well as in style, but it has similar themes. While the serious themes of evil and morality in Loitering with Intent and A Far Cry from Kensington are set within the frame of a comedy, The Driver’s Seat, as I’ve already suggested, is cooler and harder.

Its central character (not a first-person narrator this time), Lise, is going on holiday to find her killer. She is confident that she will find him, though she doesn’t seem to have any detailed plan or prior arrangement. She makes a scene or draws attention to herself everywhere she goes, wearing garish colours that clash, and ridiculously objecting to stain-resistant material, on the pretext that she considers it an insult. We’re told that her highly visible progress will ensure that people remember her and make it easy for the police to trace her movements after her body is found the next day. That is probably a side-effect rather than her main purpose: her aim is not to help the police investigation but rather to make sure that the killer notices her. It would be a shame to miss him.

She finds him almost immediately, in the seat beside her on the plane, but he recognizes what she wants from him and tries to get away from her. It seems reasonable to infer that Lise would like to kill herself but has moral — presumably religious — objections to suicide, so she is looking for somebody who can be counted on to do the job for her, without her having to take any action — a kind of passive suicide. She finds that this is impossible. She has to pursue the killer, befriend his aunt, manipulate and in the end persuade him. She can’t evade responsibility for her death, as she’d like to. That’s the significance of the title, I think: Lise is in the driver’s seat, controlling what happens, while appearing to be a passive victim.

When Lise has got Richard where she wants him, she tells him to tie her hands with her scarf and her ankles with his necktie. Richard objects to tying her ankles, she shouts at him that she doesn’t want him to have sex with her while she’s still alive. It seems that Richard ignores this, and rapes her:

All the same, he plunges into her, with the knife held high.

“Kill me,” she says, and repeats it in four languages.

As the knife descends to her throat she screams, evidently perceiving how final is finality. (p. 117)

It’s only after she has died that he ties her ankles with the necktie. Lise obviously didn’t want to be raped — just stabbed to death — but it seems possible that she nevertheless used the prospect of rape to firm up Richard’s resolve. As they’re arriving at the murder site, Lise calls him a “sex maniac” (p. 113). Richard replies that he has been cured and that he now sees sex as normal. Lise says that sex is all right before and during, but that “Most of the time, afterwards is pretty sad.”

“You’re afraid of sex,” he says, almost joyfully, as if sensing an opportunity to gain control.

“Only of afterwards,” she says. “But that doesn’t matter any more.” (p. 114)

Spark wrote a lot of fiction: about 22 books, as far as I can tell. I’m unlikely to read very many of them, though I think I have room for one or two more — after I’ve taken a little time to recover.

Editions: Loitering with Intent, Virago Modern Classics paperback, 2007;
A Far Cry from Kensington, Virago Modern Classics paperback, 2025;
The Driver’s Seat, Penguin Archive paperback, 2025.