The Go-Away Bird and Other Stories

by Muriel Spark

Contents:

- The Black Madonna
- The Pawnbroker's Wife
- The Twins
- Miss Pinkerton's Apocalypse
- 'A Sad Tale's Best for Winter'
- The Go-Away Bird / Daisy Overend
- You Should Have Seen the Mess
- Come Along, Marjorie
- The Seraph and the Zambesi
- The Portobello Road

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, British Literature, Female Authors

189 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

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

[Jean-Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muriel Spark never wrote a novel set in South Africa, which is a shame, but this collection has Southern Africa at its heart. Several of the stories are set in South/Southern Africa and several deal with race (for better or for worse), which isn't generally a major factor in her novels. There are drunks and nuns and ghosts and spinsters and angels, and flying saucers have never been funnier. The longest of the stories is 'The Go-Away Bird,' which is set in South Africa just before/after WWII and features several blerry Afrikaners, which I loved. Obviously. I clearly have a much greater appreciation for Muriel Spark than I did when I first read this collection back in 2017. Long before I'd read many of her novels--almost unimaginable. This collection essentially consists half a dozen excellent stories interwoven with some oddities but even these aren't intolerable--if you know and love Muriel Spark. How many other writers reinvent themselves a dozen times in the course of 200 pages?

5 - The Black Madonna
4 - The Pawnbroker's Wife
3 - The Twins
4 - Miss Pinkerton's Apocalypse
3 - A Sad Tale's Best for Winter
5 - The Go-Away Bird
3 - Daisy Overend
3 - You Should Have Seen the Mess
4 - Come Along, Marjorie
3 - The Seraph and the Zambesi
5 - The Portobello Road

[Misha · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my short acquaintance with Muriel Spark, I have managed to fall in love with her sheer cleverness and black humour, and that continues here. Well, for the most part, it does. Her writing has a careful balance of wit and gravitas, cruelty and empathy (though I love the cruel parts especially), the ordinary and the surreal. Every sentence seems just right, so tightly wrought and alive. Bringing characters alive in a few paragraphs, so much so that you gain a sense of their eccentricities, vulnerabilities, and failings with almost uncomfortable clarity. You don’t always realise where you are being led; sometimes you become almost too cosy while reading her, and then suddenly you are shocked into silence. And she does this so smoothly.

Now to the other part. Muriel Spark spent some time in South Africa, and some of these stories set there explore the colonial hypocrisy and sheer brutality of the ‘white civilised’. While this is admirable for a woman of her time, Spark’s writing also reveals her own ‘benevolent imperialistic’ attitude towards the locals. Even the most brutal white characters are fully fleshed out with empathy, while the Africans are largely written through the lens of a white observer studying an exotic creature in a laboratory.

I have encountered this across Austen, Dickens, and now Spark, and as much as I admire them, I think it is also critical to point out that these authors, while critiquing social attitudes, were still largely prone to orientalism and racism. One can love these authors (as people of colour) and criticise them at the same time. So yes, I will definitely return to Muriel Spark and continue loving her, but with an awareness of her limitations.

[Ann G. Daniels · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like short stories and you have not yet discovered Muriel Spark, rush as fast as you can to read this book – or any of her other collections of short fiction.

Spark does with words what a magician does with cards: you watch every seemingly simple movement, and yet somehow by the end she has created something extraordinary, right before your eyes. Her short fiction is hard to characterize: there are supernatural and creepy stories, dryly funny stories, character- and plot-driven stories, stories that evoke a time and place so well you finish them amazed to find yourself in the here and now. She can paint a character with a few deft strokes, she can lead you irresistibly toward an inevitable destination, she can utterly shock you in the most genteel manner possible. Read this book. Read all her books.

[Dhanaraj Rajan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the prose. It was my first Spark's book. Liked the stories, specially the title story and THE BLACK MADONNA, THE PAWN BROKER'S WIFE and TWINS. If I was a British I would have enjoyed it all the more. We can understand that she is constantly making statements about English setting.

[Poornima Vijayan · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Muriel Spark. And with which began a journey of true love!

[Annaliese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muriel Spark does such a great job of plot twists and unsettling endings. She is so clever, I’m always a fan!

Favorite stories: The Black Madonna, The Twins, The Go-Away Bird, The Portobello Road

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gripping stuff, it was obvious that this is a master story teller in control of her material. But prefer the nuance she brings to her novels!

[Jiselle · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 - very fun read

[cat ⋆*｡☆˚ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of fever dreams.
With so many diverse stories, flavors, plotwists and mysteries, I think this is a hidden gem.
The writing is a bit difficult to understand in the beginning/sometimes, in the way that the words chosen and cultural references were different from my own references – for that same reason it was very fun and interesting to dive into different pieces of universe of the characters.
I loved the last short story, "The Portobello Road", it is my favorite.

An older book, from 1958. Very special since it's my dad's year of birth.

4.7/5

[Eric Bruen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rare and random find. So glad I picked up this book, the stories are all so varied in scope and tone - some fun and melodramatic and others so frighteningly raw, but all so true - please read this book, these stories are so wonderful and Ms Spark is so insightful, while balancing wit and drama. I want more..

[Griselda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very mixed bag of stories full of memorable eccentrics and delicate twists and turns. Those set in England are appealing and finely crafted; those set in Africa may be just as expertly executed, but, lacking a sense of adventure, I could not quite get on with them.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clever, well-written and varied stories. I found a couple of the stories confusing but mostly felt like I got the point. The portrayals of South Africa were interesting although of course it is dated now. Personally I did not much enjoy the book. She shines a light on the unpleasantness in human nature, that exists in even the most well-meaning people. While this is in some ways accurate, it left me with a bad taste and feeling less keen to meet people. So I am unlikely to read more of her work unless I fall into a negative and cynical mood that would align with this outlook.

[Esther · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this 1963 edition in all its orange Penguin glory (price 3/6 on the cover) in one of the more pretentious used bookshops on Charing Cross Road while I was in London last summer. Not Oxfam prices needless to say, but its my favourite era of Penguin design, plus its Muriel Spark so I coughed up the premium.
These collected stories are some of her earliest works from late 1950s and they are a odd lot, darkly funny and strange.

[Ross Scott-Buccleuch · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bailed 2/3 in. Yawn.

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, and in some cases, unusual stories.

[Alison Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I particularly enjoyed reading the short story "And you should have seen the mess".

[Vaishali Kashyap · Rating 4 out of 5]

Refreshing to read this collection of short stories, an eclectic mix of humour, tragedy and surprise packed into tales set predominantly in African plantations.

[Dylan Kakoulli · Rating 2 out of 5]

An uneven sandwich of short stories, where the outer “bread” (aka Stories 1 & 11) were somewhat satisfying, but the inner “filling”, not quite as FULfilling as one would hope -does this sandwich analogy work ? Who knows !

Basically, not much “spark” in old M. Spark I’m afraid.

1.5/2 stars

[Totochelamouche · Rating 3 out of 5]

All over the Colony it was possible to hear the subtle voice of the grey-crested lourie, commonly known as the go-away bird by its call, "go'way, go'way".

Though it was a British colony, most of the people who lived in the dorp and its vicinity were Afrikaners, or Dutch as they were simply called.

From time to time Daphne had inquired the reasons for these precautions. "You can't trust the munts," said Mrs Chakata, using the local word for the natives.

"Old Tuys is the best tobacco baas in the country," she said defiantly.

[Christina J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is great if you need a little break from intriquite and long stories. All of the stories, apart from the title story "The Go-Away Bird", took me less than an hour to read. Even though some of the stories are a bit mundane, they're well written and has a certain wittiness to them.

A lovely filler-book.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was steaming along, thinking this was the finest Muriel Spark I'd ever read, and hadn't I done well to get such a nice copy (see pictured), when halfway through there was big sodding lump of 30 or so pages missing, right in the middle of the title story.

It was never the same after that.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

11 stories.

The Black Madonna
The Pawnbroker's Wife
The Twins
Miss Pinkerton's Apocalypse
A Sad Tale's Best For Winter
The Go-Away Bird
Daisy Overend
You Should Have Seen the Mess
Come Along, Marjorie
The Seraph and the Zambesi
The Portobello Road