Spark's novel, a somewhat disreputable aunt or an unspeakable cousin, perhaps the mother of one's best friend. Most of us have known someone like Miss Jean Brodie. In her new novel (originally published last fall, in shorter form, in The New Yorker), she deals with a violent woman whose romantic spirit is impatient with With cool exactness, a firm voice (each tale has its own) and compassionate wit. Spark can see, with both clarity and warmth, the plight of divided or incomplete people. It is, in fact, the doctrine of the Incarnation, the mysterious "acceptance of matter," that provides the point of view from which Ms. The devil of "The Ballad of Peckham Rye" undoes marriages, and the austere puritan in "Robinson" writes attacks on the dangers of Marian
Spiritualist seeks his physical release in murder while he conducts sÈances. In "Memento Mori," the octogenarians resentfully receive phone calls that remind them they must die. Her novels are filled with puritanical souls suspicious of the flesh, with charlatans who exploit the yearning for pure spirituality, with old people whoĬling to outworn bodies and young people who are baffled by the mysteries of the flesh. Muriel Spark has a persistent religious theme, the problem of fusing matter and spirit. It was called "The Comforters," the first of a remarkable series of comic tales, of which "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" is the latest. Was filled with doubts and surrounded by doubters most of all she was troubled by voices which (to the clicking of their busy typewriters) read aloud to her the novel of which she was a helpless part. Ive years ago there appeared a brilliant novel which dealt with the psychic upheaval of a young woman recently converted to Catholicism. JanuSplendid by Destructive Egotism By MARTIN PRICE The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie By Muriel Spark
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