Muriel Spark

 A friend passed along two books to me by Muriel Spark. I thought they were interesting although stereotypically British.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was the better of the two.  I thought it was surprisingly (since the outcome is know from the beginning) suspenseful. The setting is a girl's private school in Edinburgh where one teacher, Miss Jean Brodie, tries to mold a group of girls into a clique. The main narrator is Sandy, and she "betrays" Miss Jean Brodie to the school administrators. What is interesting is exploring the recollections of each girl about that period of their lives, especially Sandy's. Understanding her motivation is what keeps one reading to the end.

The Only Problem is a darkly humorous story. It is also much less interesting to read than TPOMJB. In its attempts at being funny I found it hard to relate to or take seriously. I didn't feel sympathy for any of the characters as they were all equally bad. Bad in the superficially realized, this is an archetypically-chummy-wealthy-British-man-living-abroad character. This is his best-friend-from-college-chum who wants to help his wife get a divorce. Add lots of improbable events in, without allowing any real emotion or connections to be created and you get the story.
Muriel Spark is a talented writer and TPOMJB reminded me, because of the repetition, of Stein. Although she was writing after Stein, perhaps benefiting from her influence.

Any sufficiently boring history of magic is indistinguishable from boring history

Sometimes a book is published that seems to be exactly the type you will enjoy, but turns out to be a disappointment. An excellent example of such a book is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. This book details how magic is revived by two magicians in England in 1806. It is an alternate history. What the book does well is provide a rich literature for British magic in footnotes, create believable historical characters, and engage the reader to the end. The book falls short though in ending badly, in creating unsympathetic (arguably stupid) characters, and giving the female characters no personality or agency.

If the book had had an ending to suit its length it would make up for much, but instead the ending seems patched on. After 782 pages I expect to feel that my reading time was well spent. It is apparent from the fact that "darkness" covers the world at the novel's end that Clarke intends to write a sequel, but why would I read a sequel to a book if the plot can not not be brought to some kind of conclusion in so many pages? One problem many books seem to have is being too long. I think this is a problem of the author not knowing how to end the novel and not doing enough revision. If something could be told in fewer pages then it probably should be.

A second problem with the book is the unsympathetic and boring characters. Neither magician is sympathetic. Jonathan Strange is particularly unpleasant, pompous and self-important. Granted this could be said to be true to the literary form of the British novel, but the plot would be more interesting if the main characters are likeable.

Second, I must object to the comparisons of this book with those by Jane Austen (review). The characters in Austen's novels have personality - both the female and the male characters. In this book the female characters are dull and uninteresting. That the women are boring characters is quite surprising since Jonathan Strange's wife, Arabella Strange, plays a significant role in the book. The issue is the total lack of agency that she has. She has no particular skills or intelligence. When she "dies" her husband finds another young woman to marry, though their marriage is forestalled when Arabella revives. The message of the book seems to be that women are replaceable, but necessary. That is why it is unfair to compare this to Austen. Though Austen's characters had limited agency they did manage to accomplish things, in the private realm. Clarke's female characters are singularly unaccomplished.

The fundamental problem with the book is the concept - making an alternate history of a magical Britain and creating it to be as dull as an actual history. The magic has been taken out of magic.

Multigenerational dramas

Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende is an interesting book, but like all books about multiple generations of characters it is lengthy. Unfortunately, it is also part of a trilogy, with Portrait in Sepia, and The House of the Spirits being the missing books. So, I cannot give a complete review of the entire plotline. However, I can safely classify the book as bildungsroman/romance light.

This novel is a story about Eliza Sommers, who adopted by a British family living in Chile, grows up sheltered in a multicultural household. Historical detail is vividly provided and the cultural attitudes of the British are painted over the Chilean background. Eliza grows up and falls in love with a young Chilean man. The novel moves from romance to adventure as Eliza follows her love to the gold rush in California. On the ship she stows away with the help of a Chinese doctor (to whom Allende has already introduced the reader, through extended flashbacks and descriptions of mainland China and Hong Kong) and with his help searches California for her love. Disguising herself as a boy she searches until her love has become more of a talisman than a memory. Finally, she returns to San Francisco and assists the doctor with his work. The book ends with the long-delayed acknowledgement of love between the doctor and Eliza.

Though this is a good story, the fact that there is no resolution after 399 pages and additional books that continue the story is discouraging. One has to be really interested in the characters to continue. If your not interested in multigenerational stories this is not the book for you.

"Venetia"

This novel by Benjamin Disreali is surprisingly quite interesting. Admittedly I only downloaded it to my Kindle because it was free. I must confess that I was hazy about exactly who Disreali was. A philosopher? He was in fact a British Prime Minister for roughly seven years, and the only Jewish PM.

Apparently, he wrote novels to get himself out of debt. This must be a purely British idea. Charles Dickens also seemed to do well writing. Writing novels in the modern day seems unlikely to get one out of debt. I can imagine the disbelief of a credit card company if someone were to say "Just wait till my new novel comes out! I will earn so much I will be able to pay all my bills!"

The novel Venetia is not the most famous. According to the Wikipedia entry it is "a minor novel" which mangles the histories of both Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley However, I was surprised by how good the writing was. It describes the life history of Venetia from her isolated childhood to her introduction to the king and queen and beyond! Unlike most romantic stories about how young Victorian women end up getting married, it is her relationship with her mother which is most central (and her absent father). That relationship which often appears to be both unhealthy and controlling is very very well described. Venetia's descents into illness which are in direct response to the control exercised by her mother are also insightful. The relationship between Venetia and her childhood friend, Plantagenet provides the romance.

I almost quit reading near the end as I expected the ending to be predictable, but there is a twist at the end which makes this book hard to categorize as a romance.

"An Academic Question"

An Academic Question a novel by Barbara Pym is a rigidly light-hearted portrayal of a woman, Caroline, trying to figure out what she should be doing. Married to an academic, and dissatisfied with being a housewife she attempts to fill her time by reading to residents at a retirement home. Her husband becomes very interested in the individual that Caroline is reading to, and steals a manuscript to further his research.

The cynical disrespect and disregard that Caroline, her husband, and all the characters exhibit for ethics or pretense of social feeling is no doubt intended to amuse. Since her best friend is a hedgehog-fancier one cannot help but imagine that this is supposed to be a comedic story. Perhaps it is the distance in time (the book was published posthumously in 1986), but rather than humorous the characters are repellent, the plot depressing, the racism irritating. This is the type of book that might be interesting when published, but is quickly outmoded.