The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961)

This is my first time ever to read Muriel Spark's very famous novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.  I have seen the movie several times on cable so I knew the general plot line of a teacher at a private school  in pre-WW Two  Scotland, sympathetic to the Fascists in Italy and Hitler in the early years whose teaching methods were unconventional.  Every year she would select a few pupils as "her girls" and try to truly educate them.  To me part of the immense pleasure in reading this very insightful and at times hilarious novel was in seeing how Miss Brodie's girls perceived her and especially her relationships with two male teachers.  I think part of my enjoyment of this book arose from my having three daughters and wondering how they would react to Miss Brodie.  This is not a long book, the prose is a consistent delight, the satire is really well done and the characters are marvelously developed.  I am so glad I have at last read this book.

I was given a free review copy.

Mel u

"The First Year of My Life" by Muriel Spark A short story by the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark (1918–2006) was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer, and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film. Spark became a Dame of the British Empire in 1993.

It has been over four decades since in read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.  I have the plot pretty well still but maybe that comes from the movie.  Four decades is too long between reading the wonderful work of Ms. Spark.  This is a very interesting kind of one idea story.  It is the story, told from long ago memories, of what a baby experienced in the first year of their life.  The narrator says there is a theory, which she believes, that babies for the first year of their lives understand everything that is going on in the world they inhabit but once they get older they lose this ability.  This story is about the world the baby was born into in the year World War One began.  Spark does a brilliant job of letting us see the horrors of this year.  Just as expected I would, I really enjoyed this story.  I have access to one of her ghost stories and hope to read it soon.