Muriel spark she was a back author of everything. This is the only way to understand her detached, ironic literature, full of humor and with that avant-garde point that makes some authors like her transcend their time to adopt that label of classics or at least references of their time.
Between Spark and Tom sharpe la humor literature British achieved a revaluation as a genre in itself and not as something accessory that can accompany any work. Because life is, grotesque, laughter and parody beyond the transcendent tragedy to which we are culturally accustomed. No one survives to discover Olympus or heaven. So what we have left is to laugh or at least try.
Achieving that hilarity, in the case of Muriel Spark, is a very well-crafted task, from the plots to the characters. Because in a world of coincidences heading towards disaster, her characters emerge with that desire for glory that I already indicated before is inserted in our cultural and emotional DNA. The setbacks are as monumental as they are empathetic to end up discerning how bad we are if we don't laugh at those who walk through their novels as our replicas...
A separate thing is that through humor there is also open criticism and complaint. Because intelligence and imagination awaken that humor that exudes irony. And irony always loads the chamber with subtlety, to end up shooting at everything.
Top 3 recommended novels by Muriel Spark
The voices
The inner voice, which is so appealed to when seeking the best for each one, ends up being a bloody disease when it ends up manifesting itself openly in the psyche of each one. And all because from time to time he can tell us to kill one or the other ...
This is a novel. A novel in which its protagonist, Caroline Rose, a potential writer recently converted to Catholicism, hears voices. Specifically, the voice and keys of the machine of the person who is writing this novel. She knows she is a character from a novel, and luckily the novel is fascinating, hilarious, and profound. Although sometimes he will try to change it. His story partners are amazing. For example, Laurence, your partner, has a charming and seemingly harmless grandmother.
But she discovers that she and a gang of spies could be trafficking diamonds hidden inside the bread. We would all like to live in a Muriel Spark novel, where nothing is as it seems. Where it seems like everything is fun and clever, but it can be harsh and sinister. Muriel Spark, who also converted to Catholicism and suffered a nervous breakdown, wrote 22 ultra-personal and effervescent novels. A career that began, precisely, with this story.
The meddler
Vital intrusion. That is what every writer would long for to fill his dialogues with absolute verisimilitude. Because beyond imagining the dialogues based on the defined profile of each character, then there is that unsuspected imprint that, due to its stridency, makes those who manifest themselves in this way even more credible. Paradoxes of life and the job of pretending to tell life...
Fleur Talbot must survive in the incredibly classist and sexist London of after the Second World War. And she doesn't just want to survive: she wants to live and she wants to do it her way. She joins the Autobiographical Association, a club where a snob tasks her with rewriting the memoirs of a group of eccentric millionaires. In parallel to this job, where she senses a dangerous fraud, she consoles the wife of her boss's lover, a gray guy who, in turn, will hook up with a poet.
Everyone thinks she's a busybody, but nothing could be further from the truth. She just wants to write her first novel. It is increasingly difficult for her to differentiate fiction and reality. They talk to her about leading a more conventional life, about getting married, but she doesn't like novels or overly normal lives: "One day I will write the story of my life, but first I have to live."
The fullness of Miss Brodie
In the XNUMXs, Miss Jean Brodie was a teacher at an Edinburgh girls' school. Among his students, each year he selects a group of special girls to whom he instills his moral and aesthetic ideas in order to avoid a future of routine and vulgarity.
But his pedagogical methods will conflict with established conventions, at the same time that they will drift towards a determined manipulation of the mentality of his select group of students, to the point of concocting risky sexual strategies for them and trying to determine their future.
With this novel (rated `` perfect '' by The Chicago Tribune and a `` ruthless comedy '' by The Guardian), Muriel Spark introduces us to a world of innocent appearance but with a messy background, in which longings and frustrations, love affairs and professional intrigues, devotions and grudges intermingle in a subtle and inexorable way, weaving a small tapestry that represents the deepest folds and meanders of the human condition.
