Tag Archives: Muriel Spark

Olivia in India by O. Douglas

Posted on by

This is the first book which O.Douglas, sometimes known as Anna Buchan, had published (in 1912). It’s very autobiographical and it’s written in the form of a series of letters, the first of which is written from a ship in Liverpool which is ready to set off on the long voyage to India. Olivia is going to India to spend time with her bother, affectionately nicknamed Boggley. He is in India doing some sort of Empire related job.

We only read the letters which Olivia is writing and it’s very near the end before we learn who she’s actually writing them to. There are never any replies, although she sometimes alludes to something which has been mentioned in a letter to her. Obviously the early letters are all about the voyage and the other passengers but when Olivia reaches India she’s all over the place, experiencing as much of the life there as she can, taking trains across the country, visiting the Taj Mahal and meeting all sorts of people, good and bad.

So it’s all very different from her other books which are set in Scotland but she does write about home and reminisces about the past. She even mentions that she’s writing a book, encouraged by her brother John’s books’ good reviews.

So I started wondering how much of this book was fiction and I had a look at the index of O.Douglas’ biography “Unforgettable, Unforgotten” and sure enough she did go to India to visit one of her brothers. I’ll have to get around to reading that one soon.

I enjoyed Olivia in India and I think it is probably a realistic account of life in India for Anglo-Indians, the fear of mutinies and disease and the odd bomb or two being thrown as Indians became more and more dissatisfied with their position as part of the British Empire.

I borrowed “Olivia in India” from the library but I’ve promised myself that I’m not going to look at books when I return the ones I have out. Last week I went to two libraries in two different towns and apart from this book I also borrowed:

Symposium by Muriel Spark
The 12.30 from Croydon by Freeman Wills Crofts
Augustus Carp Esq. by Himself
The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe

The Poe book is one of those ones that I feel I should have read years ago and for some reason or other I haven’t.

So, with an eye on the due back dates I’m neglecting my own books and Mary Stewart’s The Ivy Tree in particular has been glowering at me from the top of a pile of books which are balanced on a cantilevered sewing box near my bedside. I’m banning myself from the library!

The Finishing School by Muriel Spark

Posted on by

This is just the third book by Spark which I’ve read and I liked it better than the last one which was Memento Mori but I don’t think it was as good as The Girls of Slender Means. The Finishing School was first published in 2004 and it was her last published book, she died in 2004.

Nina Parker and Rowland Mahler are a young married couple who set up a finishing school for both sexes and any nationality. College Sunrise, as it’s called, was originally started in Brussels but in an effort to make it more successfull and pay more they’ve started moving the school to a different country each year. It’s put forward as being an exciting experiment and it seems to go down well with the parents.

The main reason for running the school is to give Rowland time to concentrate on his own writing and he hopes to become a novelist. The only work which he does is teaching the creative writing class and everything else is done by poor Nina.

One of the students is a 17 year old boy called Chris Wiley and he is writing a novel too and when Rowland reads the beginning of it he is shocked at how good it is and is consumed with jealousy. Rowland isn’t able to write anything at all and he is obsessed by Chris and his novel.

Chris’s novel is about the murders of Mary Queen of Scots musician, Rizzio, and her husband Darnley. Jealousy was supposedly the reason for Rizzio’s murder but Chris has a new theory about Darnley’s murder and the small community in the school sort of mirrors his idea of the atmosphere of the court of Mary Stuart, with jealousy, lust and obsession playing their part.

Meanwhile Nina carries on with the teaching and it’s this part of the book which gives the humour as Nina imparts supposedly important pieces of information to her students like: If you get a job with the UN and you are chased by a large python, run away in a zig-zag movement, as a python can’t coordinate its head with its tail. and even dafter advice.

Anyway, it was a fairly enjoyable and quick read at just 155 pages.

Book Sale Haul

Posted on by

We walked to the sale which was in the Adam Smith Theatre in the pouring rain this morning. At one point I had a very long armful of books but I ended up putting more than half of them back as I reckoned that I wasn’t going to get around to reading them before we move house, hopefully in about a year’s time. We have so much ‘stuff’ to take with us that I don’t want to add too much to it. Having said that I still bought:

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
Close Range by Annie Proulx
Heart Songs by Annie Proulx
The Finishing School by Muriel Spark
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

and

it was thirty years ago today by Terence Spencer – ‘An extraordinary document of life inside the claustrophobic capsule of The Beatles in 1963.’

The Beatles book is a pure nostalgia trip for me. My sister Helen is 11 years older than me but we shared a bedroom and in 1963 I was only 4 years old, she was 15, the perfect age for Beatlemania. George Harrison was always our favourite and we had a framed photograph of him on the dressing-table. (Whatever happened to it?) Who was your favourite?

So that was quite good, just six books, but I wish I hadn’t put the Edna O’Brien book back.

After lunch the rain cleared up and we took ourselves off to Perth as it was absolutely yonks since we had been to look at any shops.

The recession isn’t going to be ending anytime soon if we are being relied upon to spend money and help to drag us all out of it. We only bought one book each.

I bought:

The Far Cry by Emma Smith. It’s a Persephone book and I haven’t read anything by her. It seems to be set in India, another Anglo-Indian book when I’m supposed to be reading more authentic Indian books.

My husband bought :

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov and he got a Christopher Brookmyre book from the library sale – Country of the Blind.

The rain stayed off for most of the time that we were in Perth so we had a good stroll around the place before heading for home via Milnathort ice-cream shop. We indulged in double cones. I had chocolate and cream brulee – lovely. Husband had creme brulee and Bakewell Tart flavour. Next time I’m definitely having the Bakewell Tart ice-cream, absolutely gorgeous, and somehow I hadn’t fancied the sound of it.

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

Posted on by

This book was published in 1959 and was Muriel Spark’s third book. It’s only the second one which I’ve read by her and I have to say that I didn’t enjoy it as much as The Girls of Slender Means.

I don’t think it was anything to do with the writing of the book, it’s just that I didn’t find the subject matter all that interesting. I also wasn’t all that keen on the fact that the characters were very similar to the Bloomsbury Group people, except they were in their old age.

Lots of the elderly people in the book get anonymous phone calls and the caller only ever says – Remember you must die. This runs all through the book and it affects them in different ways. The answer which I would give is – And so must you, so cheerio! But I suppose we’re all different.

One of the characters is a blackmailer, another is a dirty old man and there’s a woman who is always writing a new will. Having frequented geriatric wards in the past I must say that Spark does write very well about that sort of environment, but maybe if you’ve already been there it isn’t something which you want to revisit in fiction.

I think the problem was that there really weren’t any likeable characters at all, and that always makes it difficult to enjoy a book.

This was another one which was on my 2011 Reading List, so another one bites the dust but I think it’ll be a while before I pay Muriel Spark another visit.

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

Posted on by

I can hardly believe it myself but this is the first thing by the Scottish author Muriel Spark which I’ve ever read. I suppose at just over 90 pages it should be called a novella, it’s certainly a very quick read as well as an enjoyable one so I’ll definitely be working my way through the rest of Spark’s books.

It’s set in London in 1945 between VE Day in May and VJ Day in August and the war in Europe has just come to an end but of course the war in the Far East is still ongoing. Muriel Spark seems to have captured the atmosphere of the time with everyone being obsessed with ration books and not even being able to get any soap. All of the girls borrow a Schiaparelli evening dress which one of them inherited from a wealthy aunt, except Jane who can’t fit into it.

London is a mess with bomb sites everywhere and the May of Teck Club which stood opposite the Albert Memorial has avoided a direct hit but three times all the windows had been shattered when bombs fell nearby.

The May of Teck Club exists for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London.

There are over 40 women living at the club which is just a genteel hostel with the youngest ones living in dormitories and the older ones having bedrooms, but love, money and marriage are the main things on their minds. They’ve survived when so many of their men friends didn’t.

Joanne, a vicar’s daughter, gives elocution lessons to young pupils within the premises so the book is scattered with the poetry which they have to recite. But there’s also Selina who is not quite right in the head and is under the impression that she’s in a relationship with the famous Jack Buchanan.

There’s lots going on and at one point I found that I had to get a tape measure to measure my hips! Anyway, this was one from my 2011 Reading List, and I really enjoyed it. I don’t know what to read by Spark next though because I don’t think that there’s much point in reading The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie because I’ve seen so many films and dramatizations of it.