Bang Bang sei morta

by Muriel Spark, Mario Fillioley (Translator)

In tutti e tre i racconti che compongono questa raccolta Muriel Spark ci proietta in uno scenario molto diverso da quelli altamente anglici a cui ci ha abituati: l'Africa, dove si trasferì, giovane sposa, nel 1937, rimanendovi suo malgrado, a causa della guerra, fino al 1944. L'Africa Nera di un'asfittica colonia inglese popolata di piantatori con velleità letterarie e mogli brille e incarognite che dormono sempre con la pistola sul comodino, «luogo feroce» che tira fuori il «lato più crudele» di ciascuno, e dove avvengono quei continui omicidi fra bianchi che tanto incuriosiscono chi, in patria, ne legge placidamente le cronache sul giornale bevendo il tè del mattino. Qui incontriamo Sybil che, catapultata nell'altro emisfero, vi trova proprio la compagna di scuola che detestava di più; e Daphne, ossessionata dal grido funereo e premonitore dell'Uc­­­cel­lo va'-via: giovani donne che guardano con spietato disincanto il malevolo consorzio umano che le circonda, accomunate da quel senso di fiera diversità che accompagnò Muriel Spark per tutta la vita.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

129 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Dame Muriel Spark, DBE 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. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.

Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.

Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.

Reviews

[Vanessa Wu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a sophisticated story for sophisticated readers. At the beginning I was having to re-read each sentence three or four times. The English isn't difficult but the context is. The narrator is at a friend's house watching some old reels of film from her life in South Africa. Many questions played through my mind. How old is the person telling the story? Where is she? How old was she in that film? Who are these friends? Are they close friends or just acquaintances? Gradually, if you're patient, the questions get answered. The reels of film trigger flashbacks and revive old memories. The watchers of the films get one story. We get another. 

It's an ambitious technical device and I was thinking that I was going to be very disappointed if the narrator didn't do something special with it and repay the effort I was making to interpret the layers of meaning.

But as the story unfolded I realised before I got to the end that I actually was being treated to something very special indeed. I became engrossed in the story and in the searingly honest character of the narrator. As she began to dissect her emotions and the motivations behind her relationships, I became hooked.

The layered viewpoints and the indirectness of the storytelling are not gratuitous. There are poignant ironies in the story that the narrator couldn't have conveyed any other way.

The tension builds. There is a climax. It's beautifully done. It's astonishingly economical storytelling. Thirty-eight succinct pages hold all the depth and range of a novel.

And then there is one final, crushing, heart-stopping revelation. Something she can't tell her friends but which she has told us, the sophisticated readers, who have stayed with her story to the end. I was totally gripped by the last few pages. Nothing could have wrenched me from my seat.

Muriel Spark seems to be regarded as old-fashioned by some readers these days. That seems a great pity. This kind of narrative power should never go out of fashion. It is heartening to see, therefore that her complete stories have recently been published in a new edition by Canongate, one of the more enlightened of British independent publishers (another of their recent titles was Life of Pi).

[Jean-Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall a more accomplished collection than The Go-away Bird and Other Stories, with the stories tending to be more grounded, more writerly. It opens with more stories of colonial South Africa, which, although they aren't repetitions of the ones in her first collection, do become slightly predictable. This happens, that happens, and then someone pulls out a gun. Do I have to say it? Bang-bang someone's dead. 'Alice Long's Dachshunds' is just gorgeous and Ian McEwan's Nutshell undoubtedly owes something to 'The First Year of My Life.' The only story that really misses the mark is 'The Playhouse Called Remarkable.' It must be the most bizarre story she ever wrote, and not in a good way, although I wasn't a huge fan of 'The Leaf Sweeper' either.

5 - Bang-Bang You're Dead
4 - The Gentile Jewesses
5 - The Curtain Blown by the Breeze
2 - The Playhouse Called Remarkable
4 - The Ormolu Clock
3 - The Leaf-Sweeper
5 - The Dark Glasses
5 - The House of the Famous Poet
4 - A Member of the Family
5 - Alice Long's Dachshunds
4- The Fathers' Daughters
5 - The First Year of My Life

[Thaïs Zanghi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Désirée is so gay for Sibyl that’s all I have to say

[Silvia Brambilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bang bang sei morta ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Portobello Road ⭐⭐⭐
L'uccello va'-via ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Mike Clarke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mrs Spark presents: a cast of characters. And begins with a man who "looked like Rupert Brooke, whose portrait still hung in everyone's imagination." A dozen stories, never foregathered before, chosen by Granada for a 1982 anthology when they'd just reissued a bunch of her other stuff in paperback. Each one is small and gemlike. The dim wife of an Afrikaans jailbird who reinvents herself as a socialite just in time to have him come home and murder her. The mental patient who befriends his own ghost - which is quite sane. The Hampstead state of mind. The girls whose violent childhood game is reenacted in adulthood with dire consequences. As in all Muriel Spark, be wary of similar sounding names or people who look alike, and listen for the voice of God.

[Chrystyna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bang Bang You're Dead by Muriel Spark and
Selected Stories by Muriel Spark - both Good

Part two of my cheating. I read most of Muriel Spark's short stories back in November last year but as I already owned these two collections and the library wanted their book back, I left the duplicated stories (8 out of 41) until later.... this is later.

As I said then, such an interesting mix of stories and styles: relationships, humanity, ghost stories, murder mystery, gothic. You never knew which way she was going to go next. All sharp and snappy and beautifully observed as you would expect.

I know a lot of folk don't like short stories, but I do and these are most enjoyable.

[Alvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mostly like Spark for her acerbic sensibility, which is - alas - not much evident in these stories. They're all quite smart and eminently readable (excepting one experimental disaster), but I finished the book five minutes ago and I can't remember a one of them. Not her best work.

[Cosimo Maltinti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il primo dei tre racconti che compongono questa raccolta, e che dà il nome al libro, è quello che merita di più. Gli altri due non rendono giustizia all'enorme capacità narrativa della Spark. Ho apprezzato moltissimo l'ambientazione coloniale delle novelle, che tradiscono l'esperienza africana della scrittrice.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good

[Andrea Cortese · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tre racconti di scarso interesse e che lasciano poco. Si può tranquillamente soprassedere.

[Massimo Monteverdi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tre racconti, tre donne dalle diverse fortune, tutte inevitabilmente segnate dall'avventura coloniale britannica. Non c'è letteratura femminile anglosassone che non sia declinata allo humour più nero, però. Così, per ciascuna di loro si immagina un percorso di sogni e illusioni e di un fragoroso ritorno alla dura realtà. Ovviamente, in forma di destino beffardo. Cosa cerchino, in fondo, non conta.

[Maria Pamela Menale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mi sono un po' annoiata. Il racconto che ho preferito è stato il primo.