What: Muriel Spark is best known as a novelist, but her short stories demonstrate her strengths in their most distilled form: elegant style, authentic and unexpected story arcs, thoughtful first-person narration, and certain turns of phrase that twist like a knife in your gut. The stories in Open to the Public include tales of revenge, colonialism, calculated manipulation by children, psychiatry, the return of past crimes, a reversal on the "meeting the parents" cliché, and more revenge. Lots of revenge and murder and crime in general, actually. Spark tends to be a bit bloodthirsty.
Comparable to: Alan Bennett would have very little trouble adapting most of her stories into Talking Heads-type monologues.
Representative quote: "He looked as if he would murder me, and he did."
You might not like it if: You can't get past Spark's stylistic quirk of using comma splices as if they're about to vanish off the face of the earth.
How to get it: If you have trouble locating this particular book, I would recommend any collection of Spark's stories.
Connection to previous Wreckage: I already recommended one of Spark's novels, Loitering with Intent (Rec. #13).
No comments:
Post a Comment