Harriet Devine's Blog

The Quiddity of Will Self

I sat on the Picadilly Line with Will Self's liver on my lap...

This novel was kindly sent to me by the publisher several weeks ago, and I started reading it at once. The only reason it's taken me so long to get around to reviewing it is that I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do it justice. If I describe it as a postmodern extravaganza -- and surely someone somewhere has called it just that -- regular visitors here (if any there be) will see at once that it's not the sort of thing I usually read and review. But let's have a go anyway.

First of all, the title. I did not know what quiddity meant, and had to look it up, though if I hadn't bothered I'd have eventually found a definition some way into the novel. Here's what the OED has to say about it: 

• 1 the inherent nature or essence of someone or something.
  2 a distinctive feature; a peculiarity:his quirks and quiddities

OK -- both probably relevant here. Now how about Will Self? I knew he was a novelist of rather scary brilliance, but all I'd read by him was some of his journalism. Was this going to hamper my enjoyment of the novel? I can't possibly say, but probably if I had it might have added another layer to my enjoyment. Not that it needed any more layers, because I enjoyed it very much indeed.

But what's it about? I hear you say. Well, I can quote the blurb to give you some kind of idea:

The ghost of a beautiful young woman, Sylvie, hovers outside the window of Will Self's study. She is seeking to influence his latest novel, before she can rest in peace.

Sylvie was a member of the WSC -- a mysterious cult of charismatic writers who appear to worship Will Self. When Richard, a twenty-something wannabe, discovers Sylvie's dead body he gets sucked into their dark world of absinthe, cloaks, and bizarre initiation rites, slowly losing his sense of perspective on the strange events that encircle him. What is the true nature of the WSC? What did they do to Sylvie? And does Richard now face a similar fate?

Quite honestly, though, this is really only scratching the surface of the comic, multi-faceted, multi-narrated, metafictional, confusing and delightful plot. Five different narrators voice the novel's five parts -- or rather four, as Richard, who narrates Part One, returns in Part Three in the form of a diary he is writing in a Liverpool tower block, while he also writes a novel, watched avidly by numerous members of the general public. Sylvie narrates Part Two, after her own death. Part Four is narrated by Mia, and takes place in 2049, after the death of Will Self, who, we learn, finally managed to win the Booker Prize in his 80s. And Part Five is narrated by Sam Mills. But what Sam Mills is this, and how much relationship is there with the 'real' Sam Mills? Well, for a start, the Sam Mills who has put her name on the title page is female, and the Sam Mills in the novel is male. But the very name of the novelist hints at some kind of gender confusion, and there's reason to believe that it may not in fact be the real writer's real name. And, as Sam Mills wrote recently in a Guardian article, 

In symmetry with Will, I suffer from sex dysmorphia; I habitually feel like an angry young man trapped in the body of a female …

 Be that as it may, there does seem to be some autobiographical material in this section -- it is undoubtedly true, for example, that Sam Mills was, or is, a writer of young adult novels, a couple of which I've reviewed on here, and almost certainly this novel did take nine years to write and was turned down by several publishers. As for the letter purportedly written by Sam to Will Self, and the account of his reply -- well, who knows. And does it matter? I don't think so. In fact I know it doesn't. For this is a novel partly -- or largely? -- about writing, about words, about identity and its confusions.

And would you like this novel? You'd have to be prepared to let go of a great many preconceptions about how stories are meant to be told, and of the need to come out at the other end with some kind of satisfying conclusion or closure. There's lots and lots of sex, though not of the gratuitous variety -- it is, believe it or not, integral to the plot. The only thing I can think of that the novel resembles a little is a film called Being John Malkovitch, so if you ever saw that and liked it, you'd perhaps like this too. 

Anyway, I'm in no doubt that this is a novel of real brilliance. The Daily Mail, my least favorite newspaper of all time, wrote of 'glimpses of genius', and for once it's hard to disagree with them. 

Oh -- and as for that opening quote about the liver -- well, you'll just have to read the novel to see what that's all about.

Related articles

Sam Mills' top 10 fictional sex changes

Don's Diary, 1996

In an idle moment this morning -- or rather one that should not have been idle except that I was procrastinating -- I googled myself. Of course pages and pages came up of entries to this blog, but buried deep among them I found this, which I wrote for the THE's 'Don's Diary' spot. 1996! That's a heck of a long time ago. I'm not sure why I'm sharing it with you, but here goes. I know I was very chuffed to get it published. 

Don's Diary

6 MAY 1996

Wednesday. It is bitterly cold as I set off from Gatwick. At the check-in a man asks the purpose of my visit. I tell him I'm going to a conference in Columbia, South Carolina, and he says he has just checked in a professor heading for a conference in the same city. What is mine on? Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women writers, I tell him. Oh well, he says, it cannot be the same one as the professor was a man. The check-in queue hardly seems the place for an ideological discussion, so I smile and move on.

Waiting for my connection in Atlanta, I meet Gary Kelly from Keele, who is one of the plenary speakers on the conference (though not the professor on my Gatwick flight). By 8pm United States time I am in my room. I am saving money by staying in a dorm and am supposed to be sharing a room, though my roommate has not appeared yet. I feel predictably depressed by the room, which is all concrete and lino, with a shared shower-room down the hall. It is also bitterly cold, so I pile the bedclothes from the second bed onto mine, hoping Ms X will not appear and demand them back. I sleep reasonably well, though I am wide awake for an hour at 2am.

Thursday. It is still very cold, but bright and sunny. Spend the morning wandering around Columbia which has some attractive old (by American standards) buildings including part of the campus of the University of South Carolina, which is hosting the conference. At lunchtime I turn up for registration and discover that Gary Kelly and I are the only non-US participants. Everyone I speak to seems astonished that although I have come all the way from England, I am not reading a paper: I would have done, but found out about the conference too late. I attend the first two sessions, and am impressed by the professionalism of the papers. Mostly by graduate students, they are all very well researched, and informed by critical theory without being overloaded with it.

In the evening I attend the first plenary lecture, by a high-flying female academic. It is mainly about women riding horses. I also feel it is rather anglophobic - she makes a lot of jokes about the English weather and national character. No point in taking offence, though. I am exhausted by the end of the evening. Still no roommate! And I have discovered how to turn on the heating, so the room is tolerably warm now.

Friday. Papers start at 8am! Unable to decide which sessions to attend (each time-slot has five to choose from) I session-hop. By the end of the afternoon, I've heard 12 papers plus Gary Kelly's plenary lecture. My head is spinning with terminology and I am increasingly irritated by the way everyone says "quote. . . unquote" and/or signals same by waving their fingers in the air. Time to go back to the dorm for a rest.

In the evening, there is a reception, with the most lavish provision of food and drink imaginable, everything constantly replenished. Everyone gets very jolly. I meet Paula Feldman, on the faculty at USC, who invites me back for drinks. I make my excuses, saying I am too jet-lagged, then regret it. After all, I have come to make contacts.

I meet some interesting people at the reception, though, and volunteer to help publicise next year's conference in Europe. I also sign up to write an entry in a forthcoming dictionary of literary biography.

Walking back to the dorm, I finally meet someone who has read and apparently enjoyed my book on Mary Wollstonecraft, which seems to have only just appeared in the US. Feel pathetically gratified. Sleep like a log. Still no room-mate.

Saturday. I've heard nine papers by lunchtime, some better than others. I am unable to concentrate on one, about two little-known verse dramas by Mary Shelley, because both the moderator and the speaker persist in pronouncing the title of one of them as "PORsepine", which makes me think about pigs. Lunch is laid on in a revolving restaurant, which induces mild nausea.

The afternoon brings the third and final plenary lecture, followed by a round-table discussion under the title "Where do we go from here?", which mostly deplores the lack of women's texts of the period to teach from, and persistent prejudice on interviewing committees towards those who admit to an interest in same.

In the evening I get a second chance to go to Paula Feldman's, and enjoy myself enormously. Champagne is flowing, strawberries and ice-cream appear, we all inspect, and are suitably impressed by, her huge collection of 19th-century women's poetry. Addresses and email addresses are exchanged. I express my intention of attending, and contributing to, next year's conference, which will be in California.

Back in the dorm I reflect on what I have learned. First, the fact that much excellent work is being done on what was, until very recently, an almost unknown body of literature. Second, that though English undergraduates, despite slipping standards, are still rather better informed than their US contemporaries, the gap has certainly closed by graduate level. Third, that conferences are always worth attending for social and intellectual networking, fatigue notwithstanding. The weather has started to warm up, and I have two days to relax in the sun before my flight home.

 

A Treacherous Likeness

I do like a good historical thriller (with the emphasis on good) and especially so if they have real historical figures appearing in them. Tricky to do, but fun if it works. So I was more than delighted when I was offered Lynn Shepherd's latest novel to review, since the historical figures in it are people about whom I already knew rather a lot. But as it turned out, that was a bit of a mixed blessing.

The people concerned here are the poet Percy Shelley, his wife Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and her step sister Claire Clairmont. In fact when the novel begins, in 1850, Percy is long dead, and Mary is a sick elderly lady living with her son, the 'controversially ordinary' Sir Percy and his manipulative wife Jane, whose sole purpose in life is to sanitise the poet's posthumous reputation, a far from easy task. This is, indeed, the starting point for the novel. Jane Shelley is deeply anxious because Claire, for many years an exile from England, has reappeared in London. Jane fears that she holds documents that will show that the poet, far from the ineffectual angel she wishes him to appear, was actually immoral, untrustworthy, and verging on the unbalanced. To help her to retrieve the documents Jane calls in the detective Charles Maddox, who soon works out that there are other secrets to be uncovered which are at least equally damaging, and which involve his own family. Soon we are back in the years 1814 to 1816, as Charles looks hard at the existing evidence of the shenannigans of the Shelley entourage, uncovering disturbing indications of unexplained infant deaths and promptings to suicide. 

Lynn Shepherd was well qualified to write this novel, as she has a PhD in English Literature and has clearly used all her research skills here. Not only that, but she has brilliantly interwoven the real words of her characters -- Mary, Shelley and Claire -- with her own imagined dialogue, so that the people appear totally convincing. Also, all the mysteries that Charles sets out to solve are genuine and have puzzled Shelley scholars for generations. What was the true nature of Shelley's relationship with Claire? Whose was the baby Elena, adopted and then inexplicably dropped by the Shelleys in Italy? What happened in Wales in 1814 to terrify Shelley so much? and much more besides. I could not possibly fault all this, or indeed wholly disagree with her conclusions about Shelley's peculiar mental state. I've always had a very soft spot for Claire and thought she came out well here. But, though I've never really warmed to Mary, I can't say I've ever gone down the road that Shepherd takes us on -- enough said.

Many years ago I wrote a book about Mary Shelley's mother, the great feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and did my fair share of puzzling over discrepancies in the historical accounts, one of which resulted in an article with the rather charming name 'A Meritorious Wife; or, Mrs Godwin and the Donkey'. You might think that this foreknowledge would have put me off the novel, and I see that Daisy Hay, author of the recent Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives, showed her displeasure with it in her Guardian review. But you know what? I took it all with a pinch of salt and thought it was really good fun. In fact my only real quibble was that by the end my head was rather spinning with all the revelations and complications that Charles uncovered. But maybe that's just me. 

I have not read Shepherd's other novels, but I am now keen to read Tom All Alone's, which uses the characters and seetings of one of my favorite novels of all time, Bleak House, as well as featuring the attractive detective who reappears here. Anyone else read either of these?

 

Dr Thorne

How Did He Do It?  is not the title of a novel by Anthony Trollope, though it could be (cf. Can You Forgive Her? Is He Popenjoy?, Did He Steal It?). No, it reflects my amazement at the astonishingly prolific output of a man who managed to hold down a highly responsible job while producing 47 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 18 works of non-fiction and two plays. And not just any old novels, mind you -- although his reputation was a bit up and down at first, there's no doubt -- in my mind at least -- that he was one of the most important novelists of the nineteenth century. And in fact, one reason why he was looked at with a rather beady eye by some of his contemporaries was the very fact that he wrote so much and in such an organised way -- he paid his servant an extra £5 a year to wake him up with a cup of coffee at 5am so that he could write for three hours before he went to work. What's wrong with that, you may ask? Well, there was a view at the time that you had to wait for the Muse to strike you before you picked up your pen, so Trollope's method seemed a good deal too mundane. Also, he was not much liked for his most delightful way of suddenly addressing the reader, or, in more contemporary parlance, drawing attention to the act of writing:

But it will be too much, perhaps, to tell the reader what she wore as Beatrice's bridesmaid, seeing that a couple of pages, at least, must be devoted to her marriage dress, and seeing, also, that we have only a few pages left to finish everything...

I've read a few of Trollope's novels over the years, though only reviewed one on here, the not very well known Lady Anna. Dr Thorne is much better known, being the fourth of the so-called Barchester Novels, of which I have read the first three, though in pre-blogging days. The eponymous doctor is a middle-aged gentleman of modest means, who lives in the village of Greshamsbury. Twenty or so years before the story begins, he adopted the illegitimate baby daughter of his ne-er do well brother, who had been murdered by the brother of the village girl he made pregnant. The child's mother has married and gone to America, the brother has served his sentence and subsequently become stupendously rich, but the doctor and his beloved adopted Mary have gone on quietly with their lives in domestic peace and comfort. Mary has become very close to the daughters of the neighbouring squire Mr Gresham, with whom she has shared lessons throughout her teenage years. Now, as the novel begins, the Gresham's only son Frank has reached twenty-one, and the whole neighbourhood is sharing in the celebrations. As we soon learn, Frank and Mary have fallen in love, but from this seemingly innocent fact springs the whole convoluted and often nail-biting plot.

Money, social class and "blood". To these and their often complex interactions are owed the trials and tribulations of poor Mary and Frank. For Frank's father has managed to get himself into deep financial trouble, and that part of his estate that he has not sold is heavily mortgaged. Thus it is that, certainly as far as his mother and her aristocratic relations are concerned, Frank has but one duty -- to marry money. Mary has neither money nor that second prerequisite, "blood" (of the blue variety), and indeed her illegitimacy puts her beyond the pale. Of course, the immensely wealthy heiress who the family would like Frank to marry is the daughter of a tradesman, but her riches overrule what would otherwise be an absolute barrier.

As anyone who is familiar with Trollope will know, these are his common concerns. But that does not make this novel any less appealing. Trollope manages to satirise the worst excesses of the appalling aristocrats and the dreadfulness of their lawyers in a way which is both funny and horrifically convincing. But he also manages to create characters who have undoubted faults and yet make them surprisingly sympathetic. And then of course there is Mary, the most admirable heroine, intelligent and feisty as well as pretty, who suffers dreadfully through a great part of the novel but bears it with great courage, and dear, good-hearted, loyal Frank, and the delightful doctor himself, very human and not always right but always having at heart the best interests of those he loves. 

I am so happy to have rediscovered Trollope. After a rather worrying reading block earlier this year, it is exciting to find that there are more than forty unread novels to look forward to! I've started one already, and another is on its way, so keep a watch on here for more reviews soon. Any fellow Trollope fans out there? What's your favorite?

 

HD on EBB in the OED

As some of you undoubtedly know, Simon of that great blog stuck-in-a-book has recently started working on the blog which lives on the website of the Oxford English Dictionary. I've always enjoyed reading the OED blog so I was really delighted to be invited to write a guest post on Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I can't claim to be a great expert on EBB, but having taught Victorian Women's Writing for a number of years I was willing to give her a go, especially when Simon piqued my interest by telling me she was the fifth most quoted women in the OED's illustrative quotations. So I did it, and it went live today, and here it is. I'd love to take credit for the title, 'A-tremble and dimplement',  but Simon did that too. Nice one. 

And, by the way, today is her birthday!

 

Farewell, My Lovely

I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.

Have you read any Raymond Chandler? If not, why not? I expect you may say, Oh, I don't like crime novels. And yes, of course, Chandler is a crime novelist -- but I rather think that anyone who reads his books just for the plot may be disappointed. But above all, he is a simply wonderful writer. I'm talking about style here -- "Chandler wrote like a slumming angel",  said Ross Macdonald. Oh, the plots are there, alright, but they are sometimes quite confusing, though never lacking in events and excitement. But again and again you are brought up against some of the most wonderful lines in English prose. Take for example "It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window". Superb.

Beautiful blondes are quite a feature of Raymond Chandler's novels, and though they are usually extremely untrustworthy, his hero Philip Marlowe finds them hard to resist. "I like smooth, shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin". That description certainly fits Mrs Grayle, the gorgeous young wife of an aging and sick millionaire. She hires Marlowe to look for her priceless, recently stolen jade necklace. A ransom has been demanded, but the necklace has not been returned and someone has died in the process of trying to retrieve it. 

There's money forthcoming for this job, which Marlowe badly needs, but he is also caught up in a police investigation, having witnessed a shooting in a bar in town. The killer, one Moose Malloy, fresh out of jail, is looking for his erstwhile girlfriend Velma, who has disappeared off the face of the earth. Between these two assignments, which prove to be oddly linked, Marlowe is kept busy, and gets himself into deep deep trouble. Needless to say he emerges, battered but unbowed -- or only a little bowed -- to face another day.

All the riddles, of which there are many, are solved in the end, though I'd have a job explaining exactly how. But that is really by the by. Published in 1940, this novel portays with brilliant skill the seedy underworld of Los Angeles, where drugs and alcohol and crime are the currency of the day. And, thought this would be enough to make any man lose his faith in the human race, Marlowe somehow manages to keep a shred of optimism.

You can crab over the morning paper and kick the shins of the guy in the next seat at the movies and feel mean and discouraged and sneer at the politicians but there are a lot of nice people in the world just the same.

I read this in an Everyman edition of Chandler's first three novels, and still have The High Window to go. I reviewed the first one.The Big Sleep, a year or so ago -- you can read that review here. Highly recommended.

Ordinary Thunderstorms

There are many things I can't do, ranging from brain surgery through anything to do with science or mathematics to brick-laying and heavy lifting. But most of them I am quite happy without. One thing, though, that I regret deeply is my inability to write a novel. Oh yes, I've tried, many times in the course of my life, but never got beyond chapter one. And it's obviously not that I can't write as I've produced quantities of non-fictional prose. What I lack are the three things absolutely necessary to write fiction -- plotting, dialogue and characters. I expect if I really tried I could produce something just about passable, but that wouldn't do for me. So when I encounter a writer who is absolutely at the top of the pile where those three things are concerned, I am not only enthralled but deeply envious. How do they do it? 

Of course all this is leading up to William Boyd. This is the second of his novels I have read in less than a month. I wrote enthusiastically about Waiting for Sunrise a few weeks ago, and now I have just finished Ordinary Thunderstorms. And my goodness did I enjoy it.

This is the story of Adam Kindred. As the novel begins he has just returned to England from America, where he has been living and teaching (climatology) for a number of years, to have a job interview. He decides to treat himself to an Italian lunch, and gets into conversation with a man at the next table, who introduces himself as Dr Philip Wang, a research scientist. As Adam is leaving he notices that Wang has left a folder on the table. Luckily it has a business card in it, so Adam rings to say he will drop the folder off at Wang's flat. When he gets there, he finds Wang has been stabbed with a breadknife, and manages to leave his own fingerprints on it. 

The obvious thing to do in this situation would be to throw yourself on the mercy of the police but, for various reasons, Adam does not do this. Instead he goes on the run, and is soon being tracked both by the police and by Wang's killer, the terrifyingly amoral ex-SAS man JonJo Case.  So far, then, your conventional thriller. But though the pursuit continues, many strands open up which are at least as fascinating as whether or not JonJo will catch up with Adam. One such is the shockingly immoral behaviour of the big pharmaceutical companies -- Wang was employed by one such, Calenture Deutz, who are on the brink of getting a new wonder drug, promising a certain cure for asthma, certified and on the market. In this strand we meet Ingram Fryzer, the company chairman, a rather harmless multi-millionaire who is blithely ignorant of what the company is up to behind his back. Then there's the doings of London's river police, one of whose policewomen encounters Adam and takes him back to the barge where she lives with her aging radical father and where she and Adam smoke joints on deck.

But most fascinating of all, and, I suppose, what Boyd was really interested in exploring, is the way Adam survives once he has decided to hide from the law. Initially, his existence is about as basic as anyone could possibly imagine -- he finds a hidden spot near the river in Chelsea, makes a very crude encampment, and survives on baked beans and what he can scrounge from dustbins. After some weeks he learns to be a very successful beggar -- even better when he steals a white stick from a blind man -- and later still he is living in a sink estate in Rotherhithe with a prostitute called Mhouse and her son Ly-on, who she keeps quiet with rum and sleeping pills in his breakfast cereal. At this point he has changed his name to John 1603, or rather accepted the name he was given at the Church of John Christ, whose extraordinary, charismatic leader gives 2-hour sermons which are endured by the congregation of down and outs because a hot meal is forthcoming at the end. Then, after another name change, Adam is working as a porter in a hospital, having stolen the identity of a flatmate who inconveniently, or perhaps conveniently, died. I think identity is something that has preoccupied Boyd in most of his writing, and here he seems to be showing how fragile it really is. 

I've told you rather more about the plot than I usually do, only because I wanted to give some idea of the amazing depth and breadth of this novel -- and believe me, I've only scratched the surface. I know the novel has had some mixed reviews, but I have to say it stayed in my mind in an amazingly tenacious way after I'd finished it -- and, by the way, the ending is notable for its lack of closure, which has led several reviewers to hope for a sequel, though I don't think Boyd has any plans for one.

And all of this is why I started this post by saying I could never write a novel. I just can't see how anyone could invent such an extraordinary and event-filled plot, or such unexpected and yet wholly plausible characters, or such totally believeable dialogue. But never mind -- luckily there are people out there who can do it for me.

Woman with Book

This is Marguerite Countess of Blessington. I've no information about who engraved this portrait, which was done sometime in the 1830s. She wrote a number of novels and poems, and edited several monthly journals, for one of which this picture was done. She was a famous beauty -- her best known portrait, by Thomas Lawrence, is in the Wallace Collection on London and can be seen on Wikipedia -- and was clever, witty and charming. But though she married a wealthy earl, her early years as a kept mistress had ruined her reputation, which suffered even more in later years owing to her long relationship with her handsome son-in-law, Count Alfred d'Orsay.

 

Two More Sparks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everybody seems to be reading A Far Cry from Kensington. Well, maybe not everybody, but several people have mentioned or reviewed it, favourably I am happy to say. Because this is a most interesting as well as entertaining novel. Like many of Spark's novels, it has what you might call a double time-scheme -- or at least it is narrated in the present, or rather the 1980s (it was published in 1988) by someone who is looking back to 1954, when she was living in furnished rooms in a tall house in Kensington. This, and the fact that her life has changed beyond recognition in those 30 years, is one reading of the novel's title, and she does in fact make that point at the beginning and also at the end -- it is a far cry from Kensington and the early 1950s. Yes, but the title has, I think, another resonance -- an actual physical cry for help, which comes much later in the novel and which the narrator chooses to ignore. The narrator is Mrs Hawkins, a widow of twenty-seven. Here's what she says about what she was like in those days:

There was something about me, Mrs Hawkins, that invited confidences. I was abundantly aware of it and indeed abundance was the impression I gave. I was massive in size, strong-muscled, huge-bosomed, with wide hips, hefty long legs, a bulging belly and a fat backside.

As the novel progresses, though, we see Mrs Hawkins gradually transforming herself into Nancy, slender and attractive, which she does, rather charmingly, by eating exactly half of what she used to eat before. In the 1950s, though, she works for a publishing company, and indeed, in the novel's world anyway, working for a publishing company seems to be the most desirable job available and several of the characters including Mrs H are constantly getting sacked and trying to find new jobs with new publishers. Her own reasons for getting sacked are connected with someome she meets during the course of her work, a man by the name of Hector Bartlett. Hector Bartlett is unpleasant, pretentious, and a terrible writer, and into Mrs H's mind springs a phrase she thinks she read in some 19th century French symbolist writer, who described a very bad journalist as a pisseur de copie - a urinator of bad prose, in other words. Unfortunately it not only springs to her mind but also to her lips, and every time she says it, either to Hector himself or to anyone else, it has disastrous repurcussions, though she decidedly won't stop. 

That's one strand of the story. The other strand, or perhaps another strand, is the goings on in the boarding house where Mrs H lives. All the tenants have become very friendly, and thus she gets to know Wanda, a Polish dressmaker, who, as the novel begins, is becoming very distressed by some unpleasant anonymous letters she has been receiving. Nobody can figure out who on earth could be sending them, but as time goes on it seems possible that the sender is none other than the pisseur de copie himself. Why and how this might be I will leave to you to find out. But for me this was one of the best of MS's novels, though perhaps not in the absolute top rank.

And what is in the absolute top rank? Well, I love Loitering with Intent to bits, but I tell you, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is, I think, an astonishing piece of work. Interestingly enough not many people have reviewed it yet*, and I suspect that might be because they read it ages ago, or they saw the film, and they think they know all about it. Well that's what I thought too, and I might not have read it at all if Open Books had not kindly sent me a free ebook, which I read on my iphone (yes, sadly, I do do this from time to time).  And I now think it is a deservedly important novel. Because of the format, I'm not sure how the length compares to other of MS's books -- perhaps someone will tell me -- but it seemed to me to be much fuller than most of them, which tend to be on the short side.

I hardly think it necessary to tell you the story of this novel, but of course I will anyway. We are in a select school in Edinburgh (based, apparently, on the school Spark herself attended), between the wars, and Miss Jean Brodie, powerful and charismatic, has gathered around her a small group of girls whose minds she is setting out to form. As she tells the girls constantly, she is in her prime -- a statement that becomes more and more questionable as the novel goes on. Her little group -- the creme de la creme -- does indeed get an excellent education in one sense, as Miss Brodie scarcely ever sticks to the curriculum, instead telling them stories about her own life and her love affairs as well as broadening their minds in more literary, artistic and political ways. The politics, as we soon realise, are a bit of a problem, as Miss Brodie admires Hitler and Mussolini, and indeed she does in some ways resemble a dictator herself, as Sandy, the most complex of the group, comes to realise: the Brodie set was Miss Brodie's fascisti, not to the naked eye, marching along, but all knit together for her need . At the beginning of their association with Miss Brodie the girls are ten-year-olds, but as the chronology progresses they become teenagers and their attitude to their teacher gradually modifies as they start to see her as perhaps she really is and to resist her attempts to form them in her own mould. This is very obvious when she sends one girl to be painted by her erstwhile lover, art master, and hopes she will become his lover. She does not, though Sandy later does. Miss Brodie is hated by the headmistress who is longing to get rid of her, and finally does so when one of the girls "betrays" her. 

A chronological account of this novel is very hard to give, because of the way it is constructed. Spark constantly moves back and forth in time, so that we know things that are going to happen in the future and things that have happened in the past, all more or less simultaneously. Introducing Rose Stanley, for example, Spark comments who six years later had a great reputation for sex,  and Mary Macgregor, we are told,  at the age of twenty-three, lost her life in a hotel fire. This has a most peculiar effect, and I don't remember any other writer using it in exactly this way. This, I think, is one very important reason for reading the novel rather than making do with the film which, as far as I remember, doesn't try to reproduce this quite unsettling effect. And of course you miss so much when you turn a novel into a film, and great though Maggie Smith was, I don't think she had quite the multi-layered extraordinariness of Jean Brodie. What Spark does so brilliantly here, I think, is to make you simultaneously admire her and be somewhat repelled by her. My own final reaction was to feel deeply sorry for her -- despite her obviously strange and sometimes misguided opinions, she had the most remarkable qualities, and the girls, though many of them rejected her and her teachings, generally came to realise this long after her death. 

I was hoping that by now I might have got a handle on Spark and would be able to say in some succint and wise words what the overall characteristics of her novels were. But right now I don't feel able to do that, which is a shame! Perhaps by Sunday, the end of MSRW, I may have come to some conclusions. In any case, there'll be a round-up of some kind, and please do keep reviewing and sending us the links.

*but see Rachel's great review!

 

Short Crime Story Comp

I saw this announced on the lovely Elaine's Random Jottings and thought I'd spread the word.

Every other month one of Bloomsbury’s Crime authors will be laying down the creative gauntlet with an original short story thus setting the theme for that month.  Then it’s over to you, the British public, to do your worst.  Criminally speaking of course!

Every other month, we will chose ONE winner and their story will be featured on the Short Sentence website.  Once the competition has closed all the winning stories will be published as a Short Sentence eBook along with the Featured Authors’ stories.  This will be available for free from all online book retailers.  Each winner will also receive a Day Rover ticket to the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate (2013) and a selection of Bloomsbury books.  Four Runners up will receive a selection of Bloomsbury books.

We will announce OVERALL WINNER during National Short Story Week in November 2012.  The overall winner will win a place at the Writers and Artists Yearbook conference for 2013 and a Weekend Rover Ticket for the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate (2103). 

The competition launches with a short story from debut crime author Parker Bilal on the theme ofDECEP TION.  Rules and details of how to enter are on the website – www.shortsentence.co.uk 

Other authors taking part include Conor Fitzgerald, Anne Zouroudi, Tom Mogford and James Runcie"

Why not have a go? I wish I could but much as I long to be a creative writer I seem to do better with non-fiction.