![]() This one has, in addition to TGSM, which I plan to read for a third time, Memento Mori and the book I checked the volume out for, A Far Cry From Kensington. So, feeling somewhat at loose fictional ends, I got from the library one of those Book of the Month Club omnibus volumes where several separate books, complete with their own margins, fonts, and pagination, are squished together between hard covers, as through some mysterious geologic process. ![]() But I had advised him only that a cat helps concentration, not that the cat writes the book for you.)Īn absolutely fantastic book, with a light surface and some darker undertones (typical of Spark), well structured, does not outwear its welcome. He had inscribed it "To Mrs Hawkins, without whose friendly advice these memoirs would never have been written-and thanks for introducing me to Grumpy." The book itself was exceedingly dull. On the jacket cover was a picture of himself at his desk with a large alley-cat sitting inscrutably beside the lamp. (I must tell you here that three years later the Brigadier sent me a copy of his war memoirs, published by Mackintosh & Tooley. She then explains to him, at some length, how a cat aids in concentration, and at the end of it he says "Good. (I have trouble explaining why I found that sequence of one and two-word sentences so funny, but I read it over and over out loud). "For concentration," I said, "you need a cat. ![]() I said something to the effect that he must have had an interesting life. ![]() Hawkins is invited to a fancy dinner party, and finds herself seated next to "a red-face retired Brigadier General" (rather a stock character, which Sparks is totally aware of): At a point in the middle of the book, Mrs. I finished reading A Far Cry from Kensington, by Muriel Spark. Muriel Spark herself has an economical way of telling a story, a manner I now aspire to, since all too often I am more Leslie than Fleur. "I didn't sleep with him for his prose style." She said, "You didn't say this when you were sleeping with him." He never reached the point until it was undetectably lost in a web of multisyllabic words and images trowelled on like cement. I meant to tell her more about Leslie's prose, its frightful tautology. In return, Fleur attacks Leslie's own literary work: Dottie has just said that Fleur's book, Warrender Chase is "a thoroughly sick novel" (and, thus, we are reading a sick novel). But I haven't finished the book yet.ĭottie and Fleur are talking on the phone. Despite their contentious relationship, which involves stolen manuscripts, among other misbehavior, Dottie and Fleur seem entangled for life. Fleur is talking to a frenemy, Dottie, whose husband Leslie Fleur has slept with. It does have more sex, which plays a role in the quotation below. It's inspired by the same period in Spark's life as A Far Cry From Kensington, though is more distant from the actual publishing milieu. And Fleur gets accused of libeling people despite the fact that she wrote her novel before she met those people, or they did the things she wrote about. It's about a writer, Fleur Talbot, who finds that aspects of reality begin the mimic events in a novel she has written. Entertaining, of course, but not as easy a read as some of the others. Now I'm in the middle of Loitering With Intent. ![]()
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