Guess who’s back? Staggering up to the finish line just before 2021 ends is another episode of the languishing series Is It Funny? This time we turn to the Scots style icon Muriel Spark, whose books never fail to cheer me. She is both vicious and economical, as well as laugh out loud funny when…
Tag: Muriel Spark
HB Muriel: Re-Reading The Abbess of Crewe
THE ABBESS OF CREWE It is Muriel Spark’s birthday and I just re-read this so it seems apropos to write about it, too. I just re-read it for the obvious reason that it was inspired by the shenanigans of an impeached president and now we have another impeached ‘president’ who proves just as mendacious and…
FFB: A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark
I don’t know why I put this off so long: maybe it was knowing it was set in the publishing world. That sort of roman à clef doesn’t usually appeal to me much — possibly because there is nothing much that will surprise me about the publishing world anymore. But dashing off on the train to…
FFB: The Comforters by Muriel Spark
I have been filling in some of the holes I didn’t even know I had in my readings of Spark on her 100th birthday year. I have not been disappointed. Don’t make my mistake: read everything of hers. Compounding the audacity of The Driver’s Seat (which really every crime writer needs to read especially) I at…
FFB: The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
Was she asking for it? Was she asking nice? If she was asking for it, Did she ask you twice? Hole – Asking For It It seems redundant to call this a lean novel from Spark — her novels are singularly lean. I always feel as if they have been sanded fine. I’ve been on…
K. A. Laity 