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A Far Cry from Kensington
A novel of 'pure delight' (Claire Tomalin) by the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie . When Mrs Hawkins tells Hector Bartlett he 'urinates frightful prose', little does she realise the repercussions. Holding that 'no life can be carried on satisfactorily unless people are honest' Mrs Hawkins refuses to retract her judgement, and as a consequence, loses not one, but two much-sought-after jobs in publishing. Now, years older, successful, and happily a far cry from Kensington, she looks back over the dark days that followed, in which she was embroiled in a mystery involving anonymous letters, quack remedies, blackmail and suicide. With an introduction by Ali Smith. 'Wonderfully entertaining.' Sunday Telegraph 'An outstanding novel ... A Far Cry From Kensington has an effortless, translucent grasp of the spirit of the period.' Observer
194 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
250 people are currently reading
6825 people want to read
About the author
Muriel Spark
227 books1,304 followersDame 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.
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.
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May 6, 2015
This book is a hard one to rate. At one point, the protagonist, who is an editor, says,
I wanted to give this book a 3 - it wasn't a page- turner. Then I wanted to give it a 4 because at the end I had a truly satisfying reading experience not to mention small epiphany on the nature of fate. I decided on a 5 because I cannot think anything else would reflect, having finished the book, just how much I wish I could have the experience of reading it again for the first time.
"'You are writing a letter to a friend. . . . And this is a dear and close friend, real - or better - invented in your mind like a fixation. Write privately, not publicly; without fear or timidity, right to the end of the letter, as if it was never going to be published, so that your true friend will read it over and over, and then want more enchanting letters from you.'"That is exactly how it is written. The technique is dazzling. It takes a post-war British sitcom standard, a rooming house with assorted stock characters occupying their single rooms with cooking facilities and transforms it and them into a place you know your friend lives in and she's just updating you on her life. Until the end, when the subplot of an entirely different type of novel (no spoiler!) becomes clear. And when it ends, it seems abruptly so. But it only seems that way because you had read the book as a letter from a friend and you wanted to know more. The writing is faultless, the technique, which I don't usually notice in books, is a stunning construction.
I wanted to give this book a 3 - it wasn't a page- turner. Then I wanted to give it a 4 because at the end I had a truly satisfying reading experience not to mention small epiphany on the nature of fate. I decided on a 5 because I cannot think anything else would reflect, having finished the book, just how much I wish I could have the experience of reading it again for the first time.
Read
April 12, 2025Before I started this book, I listened to Muriel Spark speaking on a BBC documentary about her approach to novel writing. Sometimes, she said, she'd start with the title and build the novel from it. At other times, she'd start with the ending, and then make up a story that might lead to it. When I reached the end of this book, it occurred to me that she had combined both those methods in creating this novel, odd as that may sound. Take the final three lines of the final page:
'Did you settle the bill?' he said.
I said, 'Yes.'
It was a far cry from Kensington.
Although the first character is simply talking about settling the lunch bill, the second is referring to settling a very old score. The story recounts the many occasions when the second character, a WWII widow called Mrs Hawkins, attempts to settle that score, and even though this final occasion happens in Italy many years later rather than in Kensington as on previous occasions, she settles it with the same three French words she's used on previous occasions. It seems that French is the only language capable of conveying the venom she wants to inject into her message.
The venomous message is aimed at would-be author Hector Bartlett whom twenty-eight year-old Mrs Hawkins runs up against while working in publishing in London in the 1950s. Every time he turns up in the story, she hisses the words, 'pisseur de copie' at him, a term that implies he's only capable of hack journalism.
Even though Bartlett is shown to be a very unscrupulous and sinister character in the later parts of the story, it's difficult for the reader to understand why Mrs Hawkins, who is otherwise a fair-minded young person, should have harbored such intense dislike for him from the beginning. The fact that he is not a very good writer doesn't seem reason enough for so much vitriol. And while much of the narrative focuses on the inside workings of publishing, and the many Girls of Slender Means who served the industry, I felt that too much of it was taken up with the far-fetched sub-plot Spark created around Hector Bartlett, and which quickly became unrelated to writing or publishing. The Bartlett part of the book left me puzzled although I enjoyed the rest of the book a lot, especially because it contained some fine characters and some excellent observations. This one for instance:
Fred talked like the sea, in ebbs and flows each ending in a big wave which washed up the main idea. So that you didn't have to listen much at all, but just wait for the big splash.
And this:
I was tired of the whole scene and longed to be able to go into a bookshop as in former times and choose a book without being aware of all that went into the making of it.
Soon after I'd finished the novel, I picked up Spark's autobiography, Curriculum Vitae, and discovered the 'original' of Hector Bartlett—and the possible reason for all the vitriol. When she was in her late twenties, and divorced from Sydney Spark whom she'd married at nineteen, Muriel found work in London in publishing. She met up with would-be writer Derek Stanford, and although she disliked his florid writing style, she collaborated with him on several poetry projects one of which was a handbook for students called 'A Tribute to Wordsworth'. However, she maintains that when her independently written book on Mary Shelley was published around 1952 to great acclaim, he took her success very badly. Over the course of the next few years, he turned from friend to enemy, eventually selling her letters, and publishing an unauthorized biography containing many inaccuracies about her private life.
In Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark, which I'm currently reading, Alan Taylor confirms that Stanford was indeed the inspiration for Bartlett:
In the story of Muriel’s own life, Derek Stanford occupies the unenviable role of cad and betrayer. He was her Iago and her Mark Anthony. They first met in 1947 when she was working at the Poetry Society and he was looking for some kind of literary work. In A Far Cry from Kensington she reimagined him as Hector Bartlett, a pushy, third-rate hack –a ‘pisseur de copie’ or ‘urinator of journalistic copy’ who ‘vomited literary matter’–with upper-class pretensions. Whenever his name cropped up in conversation, which it did from time to time, it was invariably in the guise of someone whom she had once trusted, perhaps even loved, and whom she now thought of as beyond the pale. She was well aware that no matter what she said or did she could not erase him from her past.
Alan Taylor claims that this experience made her very wary of what others wrote about her for the rest of her life; she reacted bitterly whenever any unauthorized recollections about her appeared in print. 'I have been troubled throughout my life by one mythomaniac [Derek Stanford] and do not propose my biography to be distorted by another of those.'
The solution of course was to write her own biography, Curriculum Vitae. Unfortunately she wrote only the first volume which stops around the time in which A Far Cry from Kensington is set. If we want to know more, we have no choice but to read what others wrote about her.
Or we can stick to the novels. She emerges quite clearly in their pages.
'Did you settle the bill?' he said.
I said, 'Yes.'
It was a far cry from Kensington.
Although the first character is simply talking about settling the lunch bill, the second is referring to settling a very old score. The story recounts the many occasions when the second character, a WWII widow called Mrs Hawkins, attempts to settle that score, and even though this final occasion happens in Italy many years later rather than in Kensington as on previous occasions, she settles it with the same three French words she's used on previous occasions. It seems that French is the only language capable of conveying the venom she wants to inject into her message.
The venomous message is aimed at would-be author Hector Bartlett whom twenty-eight year-old Mrs Hawkins runs up against while working in publishing in London in the 1950s. Every time he turns up in the story, she hisses the words, 'pisseur de copie' at him, a term that implies he's only capable of hack journalism.
Even though Bartlett is shown to be a very unscrupulous and sinister character in the later parts of the story, it's difficult for the reader to understand why Mrs Hawkins, who is otherwise a fair-minded young person, should have harbored such intense dislike for him from the beginning. The fact that he is not a very good writer doesn't seem reason enough for so much vitriol. And while much of the narrative focuses on the inside workings of publishing, and the many Girls of Slender Means who served the industry, I felt that too much of it was taken up with the far-fetched sub-plot Spark created around Hector Bartlett, and which quickly became unrelated to writing or publishing. The Bartlett part of the book left me puzzled although I enjoyed the rest of the book a lot, especially because it contained some fine characters and some excellent observations. This one for instance:
Fred talked like the sea, in ebbs and flows each ending in a big wave which washed up the main idea. So that you didn't have to listen much at all, but just wait for the big splash.
And this:
I was tired of the whole scene and longed to be able to go into a bookshop as in former times and choose a book without being aware of all that went into the making of it.
Soon after I'd finished the novel, I picked up Spark's autobiography, Curriculum Vitae, and discovered the 'original' of Hector Bartlett—and the possible reason for all the vitriol. When she was in her late twenties, and divorced from Sydney Spark whom she'd married at nineteen, Muriel found work in London in publishing. She met up with would-be writer Derek Stanford, and although she disliked his florid writing style, she collaborated with him on several poetry projects one of which was a handbook for students called 'A Tribute to Wordsworth'. However, she maintains that when her independently written book on Mary Shelley was published around 1952 to great acclaim, he took her success very badly. Over the course of the next few years, he turned from friend to enemy, eventually selling her letters, and publishing an unauthorized biography containing many inaccuracies about her private life.
In Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark, which I'm currently reading, Alan Taylor confirms that Stanford was indeed the inspiration for Bartlett:
In the story of Muriel’s own life, Derek Stanford occupies the unenviable role of cad and betrayer. He was her Iago and her Mark Anthony. They first met in 1947 when she was working at the Poetry Society and he was looking for some kind of literary work. In A Far Cry from Kensington she reimagined him as Hector Bartlett, a pushy, third-rate hack –a ‘pisseur de copie’ or ‘urinator of journalistic copy’ who ‘vomited literary matter’–with upper-class pretensions. Whenever his name cropped up in conversation, which it did from time to time, it was invariably in the guise of someone whom she had once trusted, perhaps even loved, and whom she now thought of as beyond the pale. She was well aware that no matter what she said or did she could not erase him from her past.
Alan Taylor claims that this experience made her very wary of what others wrote about her for the rest of her life; she reacted bitterly whenever any unauthorized recollections about her appeared in print. 'I have been troubled throughout my life by one mythomaniac [Derek Stanford] and do not propose my biography to be distorted by another of those.'
The solution of course was to write her own biography, Curriculum Vitae. Unfortunately she wrote only the first volume which stops around the time in which A Far Cry from Kensington is set. If we want to know more, we have no choice but to read what others wrote about her.
Or we can stick to the novels. She emerges quite clearly in their pages.
October 27, 2016
I’ve done with Muriel Sparks. She’s bonkers. How about this
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – pretty good, very cool
The Driver’s Seat – an insult to the reader’s intelligence
The Girls of Slender Means – lovely frail wisp of a novel, poignant and memorable
A Far Cry from Kensington – absolute tosh
Ali Smith says in her introduction
This is a fiction about what happens when you speak the plain truth out loud
Actually this is a fiction about a woman who has a compulsion to insult a particular man (who deserves it) over and over again, monotonously, using the same insulting phrase, as if it still remains apt or funny after the twentieth repetition. The phrase (in French) is introduced on page 43 and then clanged out like a wince-inducing church bell every five or ten pages until its final appearance on page 194 which is the last page. Being insulted in this way drives the guy to concoct an absurd, farcical plot against Mrs Hawkins, the woman with the very specific case of Tourette’s syndrome. This is a very very silly novel.
Aside from that Mrs Hawkins, our narrator, is fond of dishing out free advice to all and sundry and I’m at a loss to figure out if this advice is supposed to be serious or not.
So I passed him some very good advice, that if you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work, I explained, the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk-lamp. The light from a lamp, I explained, gives a cat great satisfaction. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost.
I can conclusively report this is utter nonsense. I have two cats, and therefore should be twice as serene as the average person, but it is not so. If I try to concentrate on some “problem” or “piece of writing” the following will happen
1. The black and white cat meows and whines at the back door.
2. I open the back door. The black and white cat hovers around the back door, unable to make up its mind whether outside is preferable to inside.
3. I leave the door open in the hope that it will make its mind up.
4. The room is suffused by an icy chill from outside.
5. The orange cat races to the back door and hisses and inexplicably starts a fight with the black and white cat which has done absolutely nothing to provoke such an attack. I attempt to reason with the orange cat but to no avail.
6. The black and white cat runs upstairs loudly.
7. I close the back door.
8. The orange cat whines and meows for some food.
9. I provide the food. It eats it. It goes away.
10. The black and white cat, having sniffed the new food, and consumed with jealousy, comes back downstairs and meows and whines for some food even though it has chewed through a whole two packets only an hour since. Now I have to decide if I am overfeeding this animal.
11. I open the back door again. The wind rushes in.
As you may see, this is actually the opposite of serenity.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – pretty good, very cool
The Driver’s Seat – an insult to the reader’s intelligence
The Girls of Slender Means – lovely frail wisp of a novel, poignant and memorable
A Far Cry from Kensington – absolute tosh
Ali Smith says in her introduction
This is a fiction about what happens when you speak the plain truth out loud
Actually this is a fiction about a woman who has a compulsion to insult a particular man (who deserves it) over and over again, monotonously, using the same insulting phrase, as if it still remains apt or funny after the twentieth repetition. The phrase (in French) is introduced on page 43 and then clanged out like a wince-inducing church bell every five or ten pages until its final appearance on page 194 which is the last page. Being insulted in this way drives the guy to concoct an absurd, farcical plot against Mrs Hawkins, the woman with the very specific case of Tourette’s syndrome. This is a very very silly novel.
Aside from that Mrs Hawkins, our narrator, is fond of dishing out free advice to all and sundry and I’m at a loss to figure out if this advice is supposed to be serious or not.
So I passed him some very good advice, that if you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work, I explained, the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk-lamp. The light from a lamp, I explained, gives a cat great satisfaction. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost.
I can conclusively report this is utter nonsense. I have two cats, and therefore should be twice as serene as the average person, but it is not so. If I try to concentrate on some “problem” or “piece of writing” the following will happen
1. The black and white cat meows and whines at the back door.
2. I open the back door. The black and white cat hovers around the back door, unable to make up its mind whether outside is preferable to inside.
3. I leave the door open in the hope that it will make its mind up.
4. The room is suffused by an icy chill from outside.
5. The orange cat races to the back door and hisses and inexplicably starts a fight with the black and white cat which has done absolutely nothing to provoke such an attack. I attempt to reason with the orange cat but to no avail.
6. The black and white cat runs upstairs loudly.
7. I close the back door.
8. The orange cat whines and meows for some food.
9. I provide the food. It eats it. It goes away.
10. The black and white cat, having sniffed the new food, and consumed with jealousy, comes back downstairs and meows and whines for some food even though it has chewed through a whole two packets only an hour since. Now I have to decide if I am overfeeding this animal.
11. I open the back door again. The wind rushes in.
As you may see, this is actually the opposite of serenity.
July 23, 2019
Every now and again a novel comes along when it's beneficial to have some inside information on its real life inspiration. Muriel Spark was trolled in her lifetime by an ex-lover who, by all accounts, was a pretty despicable character. This novel is her revenge on him. And as you'd expect from someone with such biting wit as Spark it's a withering revenge.
The milieu of this novel is the post-war publishing industry. It all feels resonantly authentic as if there's a good deal of autobiography involved which also perhaps is why, on the whole, it's a little warmer than her other books, as if Spark enjoyed the nostalgia involved. Thematically, it's a little heavy handed. Spark has some fun showing us how science might only provide elaborate variations of religious superstition and there's a liberal dosage of silliness in her plotting. She might have given the persecuted writer in the novel her own name - a mischievous device Martin Amis and Milan Kundera were to indulge in later decades. As it is Spark playfully splits herself into two characters. She is both the victim and the avenger.
Not her most inspired novel but one, you feel, she derived a lot of enjoyment from writing and her enjoyment is contagious.
The milieu of this novel is the post-war publishing industry. It all feels resonantly authentic as if there's a good deal of autobiography involved which also perhaps is why, on the whole, it's a little warmer than her other books, as if Spark enjoyed the nostalgia involved. Thematically, it's a little heavy handed. Spark has some fun showing us how science might only provide elaborate variations of religious superstition and there's a liberal dosage of silliness in her plotting. She might have given the persecuted writer in the novel her own name - a mischievous device Martin Amis and Milan Kundera were to indulge in later decades. As it is Spark playfully splits herself into two characters. She is both the victim and the avenger.
Not her most inspired novel but one, you feel, she derived a lot of enjoyment from writing and her enjoyment is contagious.
January 17, 2020
What a delightful treat!
Full of wit and self-confidence that came as no surprise to me at all.
Set mostly in a Kensington rooming house in which reside a number of genteel folk, who cook on gas rings, share the bathroom down the hall, and watch a couple in the house next door kick starting arguments. We have Milly the landlady, a medical student, two young married people who wear Liberty dressing gowns, a district nurse obsessed with keeping her room spick and span, a troubled Polish emigre dressmaker, and, most importantly of all, our plump and respectable heroine Mrs. Hawkins, who works in the world of publishing. And it's from this world that Spark also provides us with the annoying villain of the piece - the odious Hector Bartlett.
Although there is a bizarre series of events taking place, including psychosexual manipulation and threat, what keeps things relatively light here is Spark's unflappable narrator Mrs. Hawkins, and a large portion of the novel's charm is due to her warm-hearted personality. She describes herself as massive in size, strong-muscled, huge-bosomed, with wide hips, hefty long legs, a bulging belly, a fat backside; five-foot-six in height, and is healthy with it.
She is also a war widow at 28, to whom the adjective 'capable' is most often applied by others.
Spark treats the reader to Mrs. Hawkins' commonsensical advice on things like weight-loss, insomnia, marriage and religion, but she breaks the golden rule in publishing that you should never tell anyone that their writing is bollocks. At least in this case she's telling the truth, after hissing at Mr Bartlett in French one day at the park. Which ignites a bit of a feud. While this feud figures prominently in the overall plot, there are a number of other elements that get involved that I just assumed were amusing subplots. But Spark being Spark is cleverer than that. And we proceed with a sort of puzzle that keeps the reader on their toes. All to do with an anonymous letter.
The nostalgia in the book is heady, as Mrs Hawkins is relating to things that happened 30 years ago, a distance of time now more than doubled since the book was first published, which I found made Spark’s zany evocation of 1950s London and the postwar publishing industry even more nourishing and provocative. I wonder just how much of Mrs Hawkins was moulded on Spark herself?. Considering she worked in the same area of London at the same time for several publishers, as an editor, a dogsbody, and a secretary. Told in good old fashion English prose, that's not artistic or over-literary, Spark delivers a novel that was so easy to fall in love with.
I seriously considered awarding this top marks, as it had everything going for it in all the right places. I still might do further down the line. But want to compare with three or four more novels first. And with plenty still to choose from, I look forward to the next one!
Full of wit and self-confidence that came as no surprise to me at all.
Set mostly in a Kensington rooming house in which reside a number of genteel folk, who cook on gas rings, share the bathroom down the hall, and watch a couple in the house next door kick starting arguments. We have Milly the landlady, a medical student, two young married people who wear Liberty dressing gowns, a district nurse obsessed with keeping her room spick and span, a troubled Polish emigre dressmaker, and, most importantly of all, our plump and respectable heroine Mrs. Hawkins, who works in the world of publishing. And it's from this world that Spark also provides us with the annoying villain of the piece - the odious Hector Bartlett.
Although there is a bizarre series of events taking place, including psychosexual manipulation and threat, what keeps things relatively light here is Spark's unflappable narrator Mrs. Hawkins, and a large portion of the novel's charm is due to her warm-hearted personality. She describes herself as massive in size, strong-muscled, huge-bosomed, with wide hips, hefty long legs, a bulging belly, a fat backside; five-foot-six in height, and is healthy with it.
She is also a war widow at 28, to whom the adjective 'capable' is most often applied by others.
Spark treats the reader to Mrs. Hawkins' commonsensical advice on things like weight-loss, insomnia, marriage and religion, but she breaks the golden rule in publishing that you should never tell anyone that their writing is bollocks. At least in this case she's telling the truth, after hissing at Mr Bartlett in French one day at the park. Which ignites a bit of a feud. While this feud figures prominently in the overall plot, there are a number of other elements that get involved that I just assumed were amusing subplots. But Spark being Spark is cleverer than that. And we proceed with a sort of puzzle that keeps the reader on their toes. All to do with an anonymous letter.
The nostalgia in the book is heady, as Mrs Hawkins is relating to things that happened 30 years ago, a distance of time now more than doubled since the book was first published, which I found made Spark’s zany evocation of 1950s London and the postwar publishing industry even more nourishing and provocative. I wonder just how much of Mrs Hawkins was moulded on Spark herself?. Considering she worked in the same area of London at the same time for several publishers, as an editor, a dogsbody, and a secretary. Told in good old fashion English prose, that's not artistic or over-literary, Spark delivers a novel that was so easy to fall in love with.
I seriously considered awarding this top marks, as it had everything going for it in all the right places. I still might do further down the line. But want to compare with three or four more novels first. And with plenty still to choose from, I look forward to the next one!
June 9, 2022
Wow, what humor! I absolutely loved every minute listening to this. Cannot a book that gives such a glorious ride be considered amazing?
The humor is not just slapdash; it has a message. Humor about what? Publishing houses and authors, first and foremost. Religion and homosexuality and supernaturalism and one's appearance and really all of modern day life. The humor is sophisticated. Listen carefully to the lines!
All of us here at GoodReads need to know of the marvelous expression “pisseur de copie”. I’ll help you out. It is a writer who turns out rubbish, pure rubbish. Leave it to the French to invent such a phrase! Hector Bartlett is a pisseur de copie. You‘ll meet him here. It is said he is based on an old lover of Spark.
There is a mystery that you want solved, and you are compelled to not put the book down until it is solved.
The setting is South Kensington, London, primarily 1953 and 1954.
The audiobook is narrated by Juliet Stevenson. Narration cannot be better than this. She too sees the humor. No of course she doesn't laugh, but she pauses giving the listener time to reflect and catch the import of the lines. Her intonations for both men and women are done with perfection. She captures each character’s particular personality. It is easy to follow and always clear. If you can listen to this narrated by Juliet Stevenson; don't read the paper book.
I copied a million and one lines I thought I would add here, to show you why I think the book is so fantastic. No, I am in a lazy mood. You will just have to read the book instead.
I had no idea I would enjoy this so much! I have read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which I gave three stars, but that just does not come close. Isn't it delightful when an author delivers her/his messages through humor?
This cannot yet be classified as a classic, since it was first published in 1988, but I certainly hope and believe that is what it will become. That is why I have shelved it as such.
This is a light book, but it speaks the truth on many, many subjects, and it is terribly fun to read. I dare you to read this book and not laugh. It contains absolutely wonderful lines. Yeah, it is amazing.
The humor is not just slapdash; it has a message. Humor about what? Publishing houses and authors, first and foremost. Religion and homosexuality and supernaturalism and one's appearance and really all of modern day life. The humor is sophisticated. Listen carefully to the lines!
All of us here at GoodReads need to know of the marvelous expression “pisseur de copie”. I’ll help you out. It is a writer who turns out rubbish, pure rubbish. Leave it to the French to invent such a phrase! Hector Bartlett is a pisseur de copie. You‘ll meet him here. It is said he is based on an old lover of Spark.
There is a mystery that you want solved, and you are compelled to not put the book down until it is solved.
The setting is South Kensington, London, primarily 1953 and 1954.
The audiobook is narrated by Juliet Stevenson. Narration cannot be better than this. She too sees the humor. No of course she doesn't laugh, but she pauses giving the listener time to reflect and catch the import of the lines. Her intonations for both men and women are done with perfection. She captures each character’s particular personality. It is easy to follow and always clear. If you can listen to this narrated by Juliet Stevenson; don't read the paper book.
I copied a million and one lines I thought I would add here, to show you why I think the book is so fantastic. No, I am in a lazy mood. You will just have to read the book instead.
I had no idea I would enjoy this so much! I have read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which I gave three stars, but that just does not come close. Isn't it delightful when an author delivers her/his messages through humor?
This cannot yet be classified as a classic, since it was first published in 1988, but I certainly hope and believe that is what it will become. That is why I have shelved it as such.
This is a light book, but it speaks the truth on many, many subjects, and it is terribly fun to read. I dare you to read this book and not laugh. It contains absolutely wonderful lines. Yeah, it is amazing.
August 2, 2018
3.5 stars
Here's what New York Times' reviewer Michiko Kakutani wrote about this author:
I don't know, but while accurate on the whole there seems something contradictory about this summation. I think it's the clash between "melodramatics" and "crisp, authoritative prose." The heartlessness is still here in this late novel (1988) but what once seemed outrageous no longer does. Therefore I'm less enthusiastic for A Far Cry from Kensington that I was for earlier Spark novels, especially Memento Mori and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie—both 5-star masterpieces. Recommended with reservations.
Here's what New York Times' reviewer Michiko Kakutani wrote about this author:
Here is the recipe for a typical Muriel Spark novel: take a self-enclosed community (of writers, schoolgirls, nuns, rich people, etc.) that is full of incestuous liaisons and fraternal intrigue; toss in a bombshell (like murder, suicide or betrayal) that will richochet dangerously around this little world, and add some allusions to the supernatural to ground these melodramatics in an old-fashioned context of good and evil. Serve up with crisp, authoritative prose and present with a light and heartless hand.
I don't know, but while accurate on the whole there seems something contradictory about this summation. I think it's the clash between "melodramatics" and "crisp, authoritative prose." The heartlessness is still here in this late novel (1988) but what once seemed outrageous no longer does. Therefore I'm less enthusiastic for A Far Cry from Kensington that I was for earlier Spark novels, especially Memento Mori and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie—both 5-star masterpieces. Recommended with reservations.
February 11, 2024
4.5 Stars
This is the first book I have read by Muriel Spark and it certainly won’t be my last.
She is a wonderful writer. Her sentences are laced with humour and wit. For some reason, I wasn’t expecting this. I was expecting an intense writer who didn’t have a funny bone in her body. How wrong I was.
I love a book that starts with an opening sentence that grabs me right away.
“So great was the noise during the day that I used to lie awake at night listening to the silence.”
We meet Mrs Hawkins, our narrator, as she looks back at a significant time in her life. The year is 1954. Mrs. Hawkins is a war widow working at a floundering publishing company and living in a boarding house in South Kensington. I love boarding house novels- we always get to meet such interesting people!
Mrs. Hawkins is someone who speaks her mind. She is an editor with some sway. She tells Hector Bartlett that he is a “pisseur de copie” which translates to him “pissing hack journalism: it means he urinates frightful prose.” Ultimately, her truthfulness has consequences.
This is post war literary London- a rebuilding is in progress. There is a satirical element to how the publishing business is portrayed in this book. I wondered if it reflected the author’s experiences at that time.
“Of course, a novelist doesn’t really have to undergo every experience, a glimpse is enough.”
Mrs Hawkins is a larger than life character. She is described as grossly obese. She is honest, dependable and kind.
‘My advice to any woman who earns the reputation of being capable, is to not demonstrate her ability too much.”
I fell in love with her as a person. It was interesting to see how she changed as the novel progressed, but she never lost her honesty and her antipathy towards Hector Bartlett.
Thanks Jennifer Welsh for buddy reading my first Muriel Spark with me. Loved your insights.
Published: 1988
This is the first book I have read by Muriel Spark and it certainly won’t be my last.
She is a wonderful writer. Her sentences are laced with humour and wit. For some reason, I wasn’t expecting this. I was expecting an intense writer who didn’t have a funny bone in her body. How wrong I was.
I love a book that starts with an opening sentence that grabs me right away.
“So great was the noise during the day that I used to lie awake at night listening to the silence.”
We meet Mrs Hawkins, our narrator, as she looks back at a significant time in her life. The year is 1954. Mrs. Hawkins is a war widow working at a floundering publishing company and living in a boarding house in South Kensington. I love boarding house novels- we always get to meet such interesting people!
Mrs. Hawkins is someone who speaks her mind. She is an editor with some sway. She tells Hector Bartlett that he is a “pisseur de copie” which translates to him “pissing hack journalism: it means he urinates frightful prose.” Ultimately, her truthfulness has consequences.
This is post war literary London- a rebuilding is in progress. There is a satirical element to how the publishing business is portrayed in this book. I wondered if it reflected the author’s experiences at that time.
“Of course, a novelist doesn’t really have to undergo every experience, a glimpse is enough.”
Mrs Hawkins is a larger than life character. She is described as grossly obese. She is honest, dependable and kind.
‘My advice to any woman who earns the reputation of being capable, is to not demonstrate her ability too much.”
I fell in love with her as a person. It was interesting to see how she changed as the novel progressed, but she never lost her honesty and her antipathy towards Hector Bartlett.
Thanks Jennifer Welsh for buddy reading my first Muriel Spark with me. Loved your insights.
Published: 1988
July 22, 2019
I found this somewhat difficult to assess. It is the last but one novel that Ms Spark wrote, published in 1988, with only The Symposium 1990 and then, what she thought would be the first part of her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae in 1992. Muriel Spark died in April 2006 in her home in Florence, Italy.
I think it is difficult to review a book by such a well-known writer as Ms Spark, but I will try. It is a re-read, and what comes back to me now, is the very pleasant and satisfying conclusion to Mrs Hawkins' story - she falls in love, and marries William, a young doctor. They meet because they are living in the same boarding house in South Kensington. In the final chapter some 30 years later, the happy couple are on holiday, when our narrator, Mrs Hawkins spies the man who dogged her life and career in London in the mid 1950s - Hector Bartlett.
I confess I know a fair amount about Ms Spark, having watched a documentary and I skimmed through Curriculum Vitae - I don't like autos or biographies, but on this occasion, having remembered from the documentary that someone wanted to expose Muriel Spark through her love letters, I managed to find a certain Derek Stanford, and concluded that he is the dire Mr Bartlett. Mrs Hawkins refers to him as pisseur de copie, one who urinates on the pages of writing.
Having skimmed the autobiography I was surprised to see that nearly every character and incident in A Far Cry, can easily be traced back to friends, acquaintances and events from her life: for example the landlady Milly who frequently disappears to Ireland, and takes Mrs Hawkins with her on one occasion, is in fact Tiny Lazzari, an Irish woman who owned the boarding house where Muriel Spark lived, after leaving her Kensington lodgings.
Enough with the comparisons. I liked our protagonist Nancy Hawkins, who is a war widow, working as an editorial assistant for a small publisher in central London. Several times, however, I felt her thoughts and expression were those of an older, more experienced person: Mrs Hawkins is just 28. Perhaps a side effect of her bulk, with people often confiding in her, or maybe the responsibility of shoring up the reprobate owner, Martin York, of said publishing firm. Then we are introduced to Emma Loy, a successful writer of quality books, who is to cost Mrs Hawkins no less than two jobs, and I started to see a pattern. The young Mrs Hawkins and the writer Emma Loy are in fact Muriel Spark.
Writers always use their own life experiences, but this is the first time I see the main character entangled with an older version of - herself.
My only criticism of this construct, I suppose is that Ms Spark does not quite separate the two voices. Emma Loy, is a figment of her later life when Spark was indeed a successful writer and was caught-up in an unpleasant situation; bullied by a former lover, threatening to publish her love letters. Emma Loy wants rid of this embarrassing hanger-on. This same Mr Bartlett, in Mrs Hawkins' story, however, is someone who harasses her because of her position as editor. The Mr Bartlett from this part of Sparks' life represents, I think, a composite of various people who pissed her off during her time as editor - of the Poetry Society, and The Highgate Review. And so we have a rather unique insight into the creative process - a singular character, Hector Bartlett brought to life, so Spark could resolve some issues about several horrid people in her life.
Here is one of the central scenes from the novel:
'Mrs Hawkins doesn't want to touch the book,' said Emma Loy. 'You know, Mrs Hawkins, you are terribly prejudiced against Hector.'
'Let us stick to the book,' said Ann, with the tone of a patient schoolteacher. 'We are not here to discuss personalities. The book's the thing.'
I spoke directly to Emma Loy. 'Nobody could re-write the book. 'No-one can edit it. It's awful.'
'I want to do this for Hector,' she said. 'Why are you so down on him?'
'He's a pisseur de copie,' I said, and I said it because I couldn't help it. It just came out.
'Oh God!' said Emma. 'That epithet of yours. It's going the rounds and it's ruining Hector's career. I'm not claiming he's a genius, but -'
'What was that you said, Mrs Hawkins?' said Sir Alec.
Colin Shoe looked up at the ceiling.
'Pisseur de copie. It means that he pisses hack journalism, it means that he urinates frightful prose.'
There is a lot to like in the novel - not least women having to work and earn a living. Mrs Hawkins includes all the people of the house in what was then a relatively lower class part of London, the big Kensington Victorian houses, divided into rooms. Wanda Podolak a Polish emigré, who makes her living as a seamstress, forms a rather sad background to Mrs Hawkins' success. And there is Isobel, spoilt daughter of Hugh Lederer who tries to seduce our narrator; her landlady Milly, sixtyish, who is in fact a great friend - the two take off for a recuperative weekend in Paris at one point. The quiet Carlins, and William, who becomes Nancy's love interest.
The book certainly reveals an intriguing insight into the world of small time publishers in London in the 50s. Towards the end Nancy is working for a couple of Boys as her and Abigail refer to them, expat Americans fleeing the McCarthy persecutions. I feel inclined to agree with my Goodreads friend Paul; she does refer to the boys, Howard and Fred in a rather unpleasant manner, but there again she complains in a similar way about her neighbours in South Kensington, the Cypriot man and his English wife, rowing for half the night in the back garden.
There is plenty of subtle humour - and this I did enjoy and Spark's writing is a pleasure to read. Her sentences have elegance and often pithy constructions- here is a good example; it's from near the end when Greta has come to collect the belongings of her sister, Wanda.
"I had already had some experience of death in my family, and I had been struck, there too, by the way in which people who were stricken with sorrow would be able to deal with rapid lucidity with anything concerning what they conceived to be valuables; and that any claimants to goods in possession of the dead person, or creditors, seemed to have all their documents and receipts ready to present. To see Abigail, efficiently explaining the papers to Greta, and Greta earnestly examining them, one might have thought they had both foreseen and prepared for Wanda's death."
And there you have it, her genius for acute observation - which did not apparently go down so well in real life.
I think it is difficult to review a book by such a well-known writer as Ms Spark, but I will try. It is a re-read, and what comes back to me now, is the very pleasant and satisfying conclusion to Mrs Hawkins' story - she falls in love, and marries William, a young doctor. They meet because they are living in the same boarding house in South Kensington. In the final chapter some 30 years later, the happy couple are on holiday, when our narrator, Mrs Hawkins spies the man who dogged her life and career in London in the mid 1950s - Hector Bartlett.
I confess I know a fair amount about Ms Spark, having watched a documentary and I skimmed through Curriculum Vitae - I don't like autos or biographies, but on this occasion, having remembered from the documentary that someone wanted to expose Muriel Spark through her love letters, I managed to find a certain Derek Stanford, and concluded that he is the dire Mr Bartlett. Mrs Hawkins refers to him as pisseur de copie, one who urinates on the pages of writing.
Having skimmed the autobiography I was surprised to see that nearly every character and incident in A Far Cry, can easily be traced back to friends, acquaintances and events from her life: for example the landlady Milly who frequently disappears to Ireland, and takes Mrs Hawkins with her on one occasion, is in fact Tiny Lazzari, an Irish woman who owned the boarding house where Muriel Spark lived, after leaving her Kensington lodgings.
Enough with the comparisons. I liked our protagonist Nancy Hawkins, who is a war widow, working as an editorial assistant for a small publisher in central London. Several times, however, I felt her thoughts and expression were those of an older, more experienced person: Mrs Hawkins is just 28. Perhaps a side effect of her bulk, with people often confiding in her, or maybe the responsibility of shoring up the reprobate owner, Martin York, of said publishing firm. Then we are introduced to Emma Loy, a successful writer of quality books, who is to cost Mrs Hawkins no less than two jobs, and I started to see a pattern. The young Mrs Hawkins and the writer Emma Loy are in fact Muriel Spark.
Writers always use their own life experiences, but this is the first time I see the main character entangled with an older version of - herself.
My only criticism of this construct, I suppose is that Ms Spark does not quite separate the two voices. Emma Loy, is a figment of her later life when Spark was indeed a successful writer and was caught-up in an unpleasant situation; bullied by a former lover, threatening to publish her love letters. Emma Loy wants rid of this embarrassing hanger-on. This same Mr Bartlett, in Mrs Hawkins' story, however, is someone who harasses her because of her position as editor. The Mr Bartlett from this part of Sparks' life represents, I think, a composite of various people who pissed her off during her time as editor - of the Poetry Society, and The Highgate Review. And so we have a rather unique insight into the creative process - a singular character, Hector Bartlett brought to life, so Spark could resolve some issues about several horrid people in her life.
Here is one of the central scenes from the novel:
'Mrs Hawkins doesn't want to touch the book,' said Emma Loy. 'You know, Mrs Hawkins, you are terribly prejudiced against Hector.'
'Let us stick to the book,' said Ann, with the tone of a patient schoolteacher. 'We are not here to discuss personalities. The book's the thing.'
I spoke directly to Emma Loy. 'Nobody could re-write the book. 'No-one can edit it. It's awful.'
'I want to do this for Hector,' she said. 'Why are you so down on him?'
'He's a pisseur de copie,' I said, and I said it because I couldn't help it. It just came out.
'Oh God!' said Emma. 'That epithet of yours. It's going the rounds and it's ruining Hector's career. I'm not claiming he's a genius, but -'
'What was that you said, Mrs Hawkins?' said Sir Alec.
Colin Shoe looked up at the ceiling.
'Pisseur de copie. It means that he pisses hack journalism, it means that he urinates frightful prose.'
There is a lot to like in the novel - not least women having to work and earn a living. Mrs Hawkins includes all the people of the house in what was then a relatively lower class part of London, the big Kensington Victorian houses, divided into rooms. Wanda Podolak a Polish emigré, who makes her living as a seamstress, forms a rather sad background to Mrs Hawkins' success. And there is Isobel, spoilt daughter of Hugh Lederer who tries to seduce our narrator; her landlady Milly, sixtyish, who is in fact a great friend - the two take off for a recuperative weekend in Paris at one point. The quiet Carlins, and William, who becomes Nancy's love interest.
The book certainly reveals an intriguing insight into the world of small time publishers in London in the 50s. Towards the end Nancy is working for a couple of Boys as her and Abigail refer to them, expat Americans fleeing the McCarthy persecutions. I feel inclined to agree with my Goodreads friend Paul; she does refer to the boys, Howard and Fred in a rather unpleasant manner, but there again she complains in a similar way about her neighbours in South Kensington, the Cypriot man and his English wife, rowing for half the night in the back garden.
There is plenty of subtle humour - and this I did enjoy and Spark's writing is a pleasure to read. Her sentences have elegance and often pithy constructions- here is a good example; it's from near the end when Greta has come to collect the belongings of her sister, Wanda.
"I had already had some experience of death in my family, and I had been struck, there too, by the way in which people who were stricken with sorrow would be able to deal with rapid lucidity with anything concerning what they conceived to be valuables; and that any claimants to goods in possession of the dead person, or creditors, seemed to have all their documents and receipts ready to present. To see Abigail, efficiently explaining the papers to Greta, and Greta earnestly examining them, one might have thought they had both foreseen and prepared for Wanda's death."
And there you have it, her genius for acute observation - which did not apparently go down so well in real life.
December 13, 2018
Reading three more Muriel Spark novels has been the highlight of the Mookse Madness list for me, and I will definitely be reading more. I really enjoyed Loitering with Intent, and if anything this one, published seven years later, is even better. The setting is similar but is also a few years later, in the mid 1950s. Once again, it is entertaining and often very funny, but also very clever and sometimes profound.
As in Loitering with Intent, writing and the publishing industry are central. The narrator Mrs Hawkins starts the book working for an ailing small publisher, and living in a rooming house with most of the other protagonists. Her problems start when she accuses a pushy writer of being a "pisseur de copie", and the plot is mostly about his attempted revenge. I won't describe it in detail because that might spoil it for anyone thinking of reading it.
A very enjoyable shortish novel - highly recommended.
As in Loitering with Intent, writing and the publishing industry are central. The narrator Mrs Hawkins starts the book working for an ailing small publisher, and living in a rooming house with most of the other protagonists. Her problems start when she accuses a pushy writer of being a "pisseur de copie", and the plot is mostly about his attempted revenge. I won't describe it in detail because that might spoil it for anyone thinking of reading it.
A very enjoyable shortish novel - highly recommended.
January 18, 2018
This novel contains the reminiscences of Mrs Hawkins, a young, comfortably overweight, war widow and her life in 1954 London. During this time, Mrs Hawkins lodges in a rooming house in South Kensington, owned by the warm and friendly, Milly Sanders. Other inhabitants of the house include district nurse, Kate Parker, Polish dressmaker, Wanda, medical student, William Todd, the young, theatre loving Isabel and quiet couple, Basil and Eva Carlin.
During this book, Mrs Hawkins (always referred to by her married name), works in various publishing jobs. There is the Ayleswater and York Press, with the fraudulent Mr York. The more successful Macintosh and Tooley, with Mr Tooley’s beliefs in Radionics and, lastly, a magazine in Highgate. The reason why Mrs Hawkins, a competent editor, has so many jobs is that she keeps being sacked, due to her dislike of failed author, and hanger on, Hector Bartlett, whose mentor, Emily Loy, uses her influence and complains about her calling Hector, ‘a pisseur de copie,’ (a hack writer of journalistic copy).
This is a sly and clever novel. Hector Bartlett is irritating and inept and Mrs Hawkins is unable to refrain from her abusive comment whenever referring to him. Those who live alongside Mrs Hawkins in South Kensington, and those who inhabit the publishing houses she works in, are alternately charming, unique or simply odd. I listened to this on audible and Juliet Stevenson narrates this beautifully – making the characters come alive. It is a shame that, having read and loved Muriel Spark’s most successful novel, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” I have read so few of her other novels. This was a delight and I look forward to reading more.
During this book, Mrs Hawkins (always referred to by her married name), works in various publishing jobs. There is the Ayleswater and York Press, with the fraudulent Mr York. The more successful Macintosh and Tooley, with Mr Tooley’s beliefs in Radionics and, lastly, a magazine in Highgate. The reason why Mrs Hawkins, a competent editor, has so many jobs is that she keeps being sacked, due to her dislike of failed author, and hanger on, Hector Bartlett, whose mentor, Emily Loy, uses her influence and complains about her calling Hector, ‘a pisseur de copie,’ (a hack writer of journalistic copy).
This is a sly and clever novel. Hector Bartlett is irritating and inept and Mrs Hawkins is unable to refrain from her abusive comment whenever referring to him. Those who live alongside Mrs Hawkins in South Kensington, and those who inhabit the publishing houses she works in, are alternately charming, unique or simply odd. I listened to this on audible and Juliet Stevenson narrates this beautifully – making the characters come alive. It is a shame that, having read and loved Muriel Spark’s most successful novel, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” I have read so few of her other novels. This was a delight and I look forward to reading more.
December 17, 2023
This is such a weird little book. A sardonic view of the publishing industry and womens' lives in 1950s London, A Far Cry From Kensington is Muriel Spark's own story, but presented in a fictional account. Some of it is fun, but not in a laughing out loud way, more of a I can't believe actual people speak and behave this way. It's refreshingly candid about sex and only a bit old fashioned in it's depiction of a gay couple that she worked for.
Most of it is lighthearted until the ending in which a sad Polish immigrant who lives in her boarding house commits suicide. So that was a bit of a shocker in a book that's mainly sort of silly.
Most of it is lighthearted until the ending in which a sad Polish immigrant who lives in her boarding house commits suicide. So that was a bit of a shocker in a book that's mainly sort of silly.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 13, 2024
Mrs Hawkins was quite a woman. She loved to give advice, and offered it freely.
"I enjoy a puritanical and moralistic nature; it is my happy element to judge between right and wrong, regardless of what I might actually do. It is enough for me to discriminate mentally
and leave the rest to God."
Mrs. Hawkins is a well regarded editor, living in a rooming house. It's 1954, and London is still suffering the after effects of the war. The publishing business is reorganizing and there is a lot of fraud, confusion and phonies in both business and private lives. Chief among the phonies is Hector Bartlett, a "pisseur de copie", ( a pisser of bad prose) in Mrs. Hawkins opinion, which she shares with everyone, including Hector himself. This has ramifications throughout the novel, but Mrs. Hawkins never wavers in her judgement.
I enjoyed Mrs. Hawkins witty narration in this novel, that combines mystery, tragedy, friendship and love in less than 200 pages. With an ending that occurs 30 years later in Italy. As I said, Mrs. Hawkins never wavered in her judgement.
"I enjoy a puritanical and moralistic nature; it is my happy element to judge between right and wrong, regardless of what I might actually do. It is enough for me to discriminate mentally
and leave the rest to God."
Mrs. Hawkins is a well regarded editor, living in a rooming house. It's 1954, and London is still suffering the after effects of the war. The publishing business is reorganizing and there is a lot of fraud, confusion and phonies in both business and private lives. Chief among the phonies is Hector Bartlett, a "pisseur de copie", ( a pisser of bad prose) in Mrs. Hawkins opinion, which she shares with everyone, including Hector himself. This has ramifications throughout the novel, but Mrs. Hawkins never wavers in her judgement.
I enjoyed Mrs. Hawkins witty narration in this novel, that combines mystery, tragedy, friendship and love in less than 200 pages. With an ending that occurs 30 years later in Italy. As I said, Mrs. Hawkins never wavered in her judgement.
January 1, 2019
2.5 stars rounded up
One of Spark’s later novels (late 1980s, but set in the mid1950s), this takes a look at the publishing industry of mid 1950s London. The analysis is sharp and well written, as is usually the case with Spark. The protagonist is Mrs Hawkins, a war widow in her late 20s. Spark portrays her as being obese with a strong physical presence. It appears that because of her size people come to her for advice and support, which she is happy to give, sometimes rather acerbically. She lives in a bedsitting room and throughout the novel the reader gets to know the other residents of the house as well. She works in a struggling publishing house. Spark satirizes (often in an affectionate way) the industry she worked in at the time. She meets Hector Bartlett, the hanger on of a famous novelist:
“A great many people fell in love with Hector’s pretensions, a surprising number, especially those simple souls who quell their doubts because they cannot bring themselves to discern a blatant pose; the effort would be too wearing and wearying, and might call for an open challenge and lead to unpleasantness.”
Clearly a type Spark despised. She refers to him (to his face) as a “pisseur de copie”, or put just as colourfully:
''Hector Bartlett, it seemed to me, vomited literary matter, he urinated and sweated, he excreted it. . . . His writings writhed and ached with twists and turns and tergiversations, inept words, fanciful repetitions, far-fetched verbosity and long, Latin-based words.''
Mrs Hawkins loses her job and moves to another publishing house. The phrase follows her around and crops up in the book with monotonous regularity. Mrs Hawkins eventually decides to lose weight by the simple expedient of eating exactly half of what she previously ate. There is an ongoing plot line relating to radionics, a 1950s fad with no scientific basis, linked to another resident of the house in which Mrs Hawkins lives. Religion is inevitably present given Spark’s own leanings.
It is told in the first person with the advice thrown in free:
“It is my advice to any woman getting married to start, not as you mean to go on, but worse, tougher, than you mean to go on. Then you can relax and it comes as a pleasant surprise.”
“Insomnia is not bad in itself. You can lie awake at night and think; the quality of insomnia depends entirely on what you decide to think of. Can you decide to think? - Yes, you can. You can put your mind to anything most of the time...for who lives without problems every day? Why waste the nights on them?”
The whole is witty and amusing as Spark often is. However it is witty and amusing sometimes at the expense of the marginalised. The figure of Wanda, a Polish woman who has a room in the same house as Mrs Hawkins is central to the plot and I was uncomfortable with the way she was used. At the end of the book when the slimmer Mrs Hawkins and her new boyfriend move into a basement flat, there is a gay couple in the flat above. It’s the first time in over thirty years I’ve heard (read) the word Jessie used in relation to gay men, also:
“Perhaps it was the fact that homosexual practices were still against the law that made homosexuals in those days much more hysterical than they are now. The screaming emotions from upstairs were far worse than usual tonight …”
No excuse for that and it soured quite a witty and clever book. Some of the tropes were over the top and I certainly didn’t enjoy this as much as Spark’s better known novels.
One of Spark’s later novels (late 1980s, but set in the mid1950s), this takes a look at the publishing industry of mid 1950s London. The analysis is sharp and well written, as is usually the case with Spark. The protagonist is Mrs Hawkins, a war widow in her late 20s. Spark portrays her as being obese with a strong physical presence. It appears that because of her size people come to her for advice and support, which she is happy to give, sometimes rather acerbically. She lives in a bedsitting room and throughout the novel the reader gets to know the other residents of the house as well. She works in a struggling publishing house. Spark satirizes (often in an affectionate way) the industry she worked in at the time. She meets Hector Bartlett, the hanger on of a famous novelist:
“A great many people fell in love with Hector’s pretensions, a surprising number, especially those simple souls who quell their doubts because they cannot bring themselves to discern a blatant pose; the effort would be too wearing and wearying, and might call for an open challenge and lead to unpleasantness.”
Clearly a type Spark despised. She refers to him (to his face) as a “pisseur de copie”, or put just as colourfully:
''Hector Bartlett, it seemed to me, vomited literary matter, he urinated and sweated, he excreted it. . . . His writings writhed and ached with twists and turns and tergiversations, inept words, fanciful repetitions, far-fetched verbosity and long, Latin-based words.''
Mrs Hawkins loses her job and moves to another publishing house. The phrase follows her around and crops up in the book with monotonous regularity. Mrs Hawkins eventually decides to lose weight by the simple expedient of eating exactly half of what she previously ate. There is an ongoing plot line relating to radionics, a 1950s fad with no scientific basis, linked to another resident of the house in which Mrs Hawkins lives. Religion is inevitably present given Spark’s own leanings.
It is told in the first person with the advice thrown in free:
“It is my advice to any woman getting married to start, not as you mean to go on, but worse, tougher, than you mean to go on. Then you can relax and it comes as a pleasant surprise.”
“Insomnia is not bad in itself. You can lie awake at night and think; the quality of insomnia depends entirely on what you decide to think of. Can you decide to think? - Yes, you can. You can put your mind to anything most of the time...for who lives without problems every day? Why waste the nights on them?”
The whole is witty and amusing as Spark often is. However it is witty and amusing sometimes at the expense of the marginalised. The figure of Wanda, a Polish woman who has a room in the same house as Mrs Hawkins is central to the plot and I was uncomfortable with the way she was used. At the end of the book when the slimmer Mrs Hawkins and her new boyfriend move into a basement flat, there is a gay couple in the flat above. It’s the first time in over thirty years I’ve heard (read) the word Jessie used in relation to gay men, also:
“Perhaps it was the fact that homosexual practices were still against the law that made homosexuals in those days much more hysterical than they are now. The screaming emotions from upstairs were far worse than usual tonight …”
No excuse for that and it soured quite a witty and clever book. Some of the tropes were over the top and I certainly didn’t enjoy this as much as Spark’s better known novels.
October 6, 2024
Beaucoup de pisse.
October 13, 2022
Autoarea este considerata versiunea feminina a lui Oscar Wilde si este inclusa pe lista celor mai valorosi scriitori britanici postbelici. Operele sale fiind adesea satire este apreciata pentru umorul ei negru, autoironia, replicile taioase, spumoase si personajele sale controversate si neconventionale. Am mai citit de la aceasta autoare "Lorzi si complici", roman care mi-a placut si pe care vi-l pot recomanda.
In ceea ce priveste actiunea ne aflam la Londra in anul 1954 si o cunoastem pe doamna Hawkins, o vaduva de razboi ce sta la o pensiune din Kensington. Alaturi de ea mai locuieste si proprietara pensiunii Milly, doi soti retrasi Bazil si Eva, o croitoreasa poloneza Wanda Podolak, tanara infiermiera Kate Parker, sudentul la medicina William Todd si tanara secretara Isobel.
Protagonista lucreaza la editura Ullswater unde este omul bun la toate - corector, redactor, secretar. Si aici este inconjurata de o gramada de colegi, personaje controversate si interesante.
Atunci cand doamna Hawkins refuza sa aprobe spre publicare manuscrisul scriitorului obscur Hector Bartlett, care o agaseaza peste tot, se declanseaza dezastrul pentru ea, mai ales pentru ca il numeste pe acesta "pisseur de copie", lucru pe care nu doreste sa-l retracteze si pe care il repeta peste tot.
Asa cum reiese din mica prezentare romanul este foarte interesant, doamna Hawkins fiind un personaj bine conturat, inteligent, ironic, cu coloana vertebrala si amuzant. Ea este cea care leaga intamplarile si vietile tuturor, pentru ca ei i se confeseaza cu totii si alaturi de ea vom participa la tot felul de rasturnari de situatie incununate cu scrisori de amenintare, santaj, telefoane anonime, dusmani ascunsi, etc. Ea se va comporta ca un veritabil detectiv cautand si punand cap la cap toate indiciile, descalcind acest ghem de necunoscute si secrete:
"E uimitor cate poti afla despre oameni cand vrei sa risipesti niste indoieli. Metoda mea a fost sa devin, pur si simplu, mai prietenoasa cu fiecare dintre ei."
Romanul este si o excelenta satira creand o imagine destul de veritabila a unei redactii si a bucatariei interne a unei edituri.
In incheiere, alaturi de cateva citate pline de talc, va recomand ambele romane ale autoarei, mai ales cel de fata, pentru simpatica protagonista care face deliciul cititorilor:
"Daca lumea crede ca ai bani si avere, este ca si cum le-ai avea. Convingerea in sine creaza incredere. Iar increderea, afaceri."
"Intotdeauna mi-a placut sa dau sfaturi, dar una e sa dai sfaturi si cu totul altceva sa-i convingi pe oameni sa le urmeze."
"Poti sa stai linistit in fata unui televizor inchis, uitandu-te pur si simplu in gol; si, mai devreme sau mai tarziu, ajungi sa-ti creezi singur programe mult mai reusite. Incercati, e distractiv!"
In ceea ce priveste actiunea ne aflam la Londra in anul 1954 si o cunoastem pe doamna Hawkins, o vaduva de razboi ce sta la o pensiune din Kensington. Alaturi de ea mai locuieste si proprietara pensiunii Milly, doi soti retrasi Bazil si Eva, o croitoreasa poloneza Wanda Podolak, tanara infiermiera Kate Parker, sudentul la medicina William Todd si tanara secretara Isobel.
Protagonista lucreaza la editura Ullswater unde este omul bun la toate - corector, redactor, secretar. Si aici este inconjurata de o gramada de colegi, personaje controversate si interesante.
Atunci cand doamna Hawkins refuza sa aprobe spre publicare manuscrisul scriitorului obscur Hector Bartlett, care o agaseaza peste tot, se declanseaza dezastrul pentru ea, mai ales pentru ca il numeste pe acesta "pisseur de copie", lucru pe care nu doreste sa-l retracteze si pe care il repeta peste tot.
Asa cum reiese din mica prezentare romanul este foarte interesant, doamna Hawkins fiind un personaj bine conturat, inteligent, ironic, cu coloana vertebrala si amuzant. Ea este cea care leaga intamplarile si vietile tuturor, pentru ca ei i se confeseaza cu totii si alaturi de ea vom participa la tot felul de rasturnari de situatie incununate cu scrisori de amenintare, santaj, telefoane anonime, dusmani ascunsi, etc. Ea se va comporta ca un veritabil detectiv cautand si punand cap la cap toate indiciile, descalcind acest ghem de necunoscute si secrete:
"E uimitor cate poti afla despre oameni cand vrei sa risipesti niste indoieli. Metoda mea a fost sa devin, pur si simplu, mai prietenoasa cu fiecare dintre ei."
Romanul este si o excelenta satira creand o imagine destul de veritabila a unei redactii si a bucatariei interne a unei edituri.
In incheiere, alaturi de cateva citate pline de talc, va recomand ambele romane ale autoarei, mai ales cel de fata, pentru simpatica protagonista care face deliciul cititorilor:
"Daca lumea crede ca ai bani si avere, este ca si cum le-ai avea. Convingerea in sine creaza incredere. Iar increderea, afaceri."
"Intotdeauna mi-a placut sa dau sfaturi, dar una e sa dai sfaturi si cu totul altceva sa-i convingi pe oameni sa le urmeze."
"Poti sa stai linistit in fata unui televizor inchis, uitandu-te pur si simplu in gol; si, mai devreme sau mai tarziu, ajungi sa-ti creezi singur programe mult mai reusite. Incercati, e distractiv!"
January 17, 2020
This book was gifted to me, but I was not able to get into it. I’ll probably give it another chance soon as it is rather short. Perhaps folks could suggest other Muriel Spark books that they enjoyed?
February 15, 2018
This the third book I have read by Muriel Spark and, in common with the other two, she yet again consistently manages to make the everyday extraordinary and to add intrigue and mystery to the mundane. Black humour and dark twists abound in this evocative slice of mid 1950s London life, which primarily takes place in a Kensington rooming house, and the world of book and magazine publishing.
Mrs Hawkins, a young widow whose husband was killed in WW2, works as an editor in 1950s London, and she is our narrator and guide who is looking back on her time in Kensington decades later. She is one of the residents of the rooming house which is also home to an eclectic bunch of characters who include Wanda, a Polish dressmaker.
Wanda receives a threatening and disconcerting anonymous letter which is the cue for a slew of quirky character studies and relationships. Despite the droll humour and easy readability there is a lot to ponder and enjoy, not least the character of Mrs Hawkins, who is wholly committed to telling the truth. Despite being hunted throughout the book, Mrs Hawkins remains resolute and resilient, and also actively prospers through her ongoing self reinvention.
There's so much to enjoy in A Far Cry from Kensington: the hopes and challenges of Londoners in the decade following the end of WW2; the bizarre world of publishing; drinks at Grosvenor House; life lessons from our narrator; the subtle relationships between housemates, lovers, enemies and colleagues; credible work relationships; well observed characters; a fraudulent boss; pseudo-science; a truly monstrous villain; and much more.
I feel this review barely scratches the surface. I could happily go straight back to the beginning of this book and read it all over again. I hope I have said enough to convince you to try it. It's very enjoyable, entertaining, original and thought provoking. I remain committed to reading all of Muriel Spark's work.
5/5
Coincidentally I have just listened to a recent episode of A Good Read on BBC Radio 4 with Stephen Fry and Alan Davies, and presenter Harriett Gilbert, and one of the books under discussion is A Far Cry from Kensington which they were all very positive about. Listen here (or on podcast)...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09plx4w
Mrs Hawkins, a young widow whose husband was killed in WW2, works as an editor in 1950s London, and she is our narrator and guide who is looking back on her time in Kensington decades later. She is one of the residents of the rooming house which is also home to an eclectic bunch of characters who include Wanda, a Polish dressmaker.
Wanda receives a threatening and disconcerting anonymous letter which is the cue for a slew of quirky character studies and relationships. Despite the droll humour and easy readability there is a lot to ponder and enjoy, not least the character of Mrs Hawkins, who is wholly committed to telling the truth. Despite being hunted throughout the book, Mrs Hawkins remains resolute and resilient, and also actively prospers through her ongoing self reinvention.
There's so much to enjoy in A Far Cry from Kensington: the hopes and challenges of Londoners in the decade following the end of WW2; the bizarre world of publishing; drinks at Grosvenor House; life lessons from our narrator; the subtle relationships between housemates, lovers, enemies and colleagues; credible work relationships; well observed characters; a fraudulent boss; pseudo-science; a truly monstrous villain; and much more.
I feel this review barely scratches the surface. I could happily go straight back to the beginning of this book and read it all over again. I hope I have said enough to convince you to try it. It's very enjoyable, entertaining, original and thought provoking. I remain committed to reading all of Muriel Spark's work.
5/5
Coincidentally I have just listened to a recent episode of A Good Read on BBC Radio 4 with Stephen Fry and Alan Davies, and presenter Harriett Gilbert, and one of the books under discussion is A Far Cry from Kensington which they were all very positive about. Listen here (or on podcast)...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09plx4w
February 19, 2023
I don’t write reviews.
“‘For concentration,’ I said, ‘you need a cat. Do you happen to have a cat?”
Mrs. Hawkins, later Nancy, was full of advice. Most of the time her advice led to success. As in this case, she recommends that a brigadier with bad attentional focus get a cat so he can settle down and write his memoirs. He does, both, but the resulting book wasn’t that great. See, the cat doesn’t make you a decent writer.
I’m continually amazed at Spark’s ability to create a wonderfully interesting world out of the commonplace and mundane. Maybe it’s her mixing of the sacred and the profane. Or perhaps her lack of loyalty to time. It could be that she, like Mrs. Hawkins advised, really did write as if she was describing events to a dear friend in a personal letter. And I never want these letters to end.
“I had a sense he was offering things abominable to me, like decaffeinated coffee or coitus interruptus.”
“‘For concentration,’ I said, ‘you need a cat. Do you happen to have a cat?”
Mrs. Hawkins, later Nancy, was full of advice. Most of the time her advice led to success. As in this case, she recommends that a brigadier with bad attentional focus get a cat so he can settle down and write his memoirs. He does, both, but the resulting book wasn’t that great. See, the cat doesn’t make you a decent writer.
I’m continually amazed at Spark’s ability to create a wonderfully interesting world out of the commonplace and mundane. Maybe it’s her mixing of the sacred and the profane. Or perhaps her lack of loyalty to time. It could be that she, like Mrs. Hawkins advised, really did write as if she was describing events to a dear friend in a personal letter. And I never want these letters to end.
“I had a sense he was offering things abominable to me, like decaffeinated coffee or coitus interruptus.”
August 1, 2024
In which the brilliant Muriel Spark has her fun with radionics and the publishing industry. Where Loitering with Intent, published seven years earlier, takes the perspective of the author, this one is told from the perspective of the editor. My initial reading left me somewhat unimpressed, but on rereading, by way of the audiobook narrated by Pamela Garelick, I found myself warming more to the narrator, Mrs Hawkins. Yes, she is rather self-satisfied, with advice on subjects from weight loss to marriage, but if I can talk about her as if she really exists then Spark succeeded at her task. I enjoyed the endless bookish references, but if I never have to hear the term pisseur de copie again, it will be too soon. Here's to the hysterical homosexuals.
"I recall very little else of that interview but that he embarked on a lengthy discourse, citing famous long novels about nothing in particular. Had I read Finnegans Wake?
I had to admit I hadn't, not from cover to cover. I didn't know at the time that very few people had."
July 14, 2019
From November 2011 — Agnes Hawkins lives in a lodging house in South Kensington and is an editor at a publishing house that's seen better days. She is used to the fact the people are always trying to befriend her—with her reassuring round figure making her seem like a mother figure—as a dispenser of solid advice, and of course as a useful contact in an industry notoriously difficult to get into, let alone for writers without much talent. One writer, Hector Bartlett, gets under her skin especially, but chooses to ignore her constant brush-offs and contrives to arrange "chance" encounters on a regular basis. But one day this proves too much for Agnes and she accuses him of being a pisseur de copie to his face, an insulting French term to designate one who literally "pisses (bad) copy". This will of course get Agnes in trouble, but the derogatory appellation sticks to Bartlett all the same. Meanwhile, Wanda, another lodger she's befriended, has received a threatening letter. As a Polish immigrant trying to make ends meet as a seamstress, Wanda is terrified and convinced she'll be deported because of the accusations in the letter. Wanda slowly loses her sanity as the threats multiply and the lodgers all suspect one another of being the letter writers. Meanwhile, Agnes is far from suspecting what her friend has gotten involved into in order to pacify her accuser. Another amusing romp in Muriel Spark's fictionalized world of publishing, filled as always with larger than life characters and scenarios which may but probably don't always stem purely from her imagination.
July 14, 2019
Just finished this fine book, which I found both clever and compelling.
It was my first Muriel Spark and a nice new copy from the library.
Characters were interesting and they developed superbly as the book went on. I liked the way Muriel Spark wove the story amongst the people of the book subtly using observation and humour, and what might seem at first, benign description of objects and situations, to progress events, and then gently remind the reader of key pieces of information or influences on the story; done so well in one scene in a group discussion in a flat late in the book.
There is humanity, tension, insight into how people shared flats, alongwith possible crime and the delightful insight into what small-time publishing in London in the 1950s.
Perfect writing. The spark has been lit for me to be read more Muriel.
It was my first Muriel Spark and a nice new copy from the library.
Characters were interesting and they developed superbly as the book went on. I liked the way Muriel Spark wove the story amongst the people of the book subtly using observation and humour, and what might seem at first, benign description of objects and situations, to progress events, and then gently remind the reader of key pieces of information or influences on the story; done so well in one scene in a group discussion in a flat late in the book.
There is humanity, tension, insight into how people shared flats, alongwith possible crime and the delightful insight into what small-time publishing in London in the 1950s.
Perfect writing. The spark has been lit for me to be read more Muriel.
October 4, 2021
This was such an enjoyable read. Set in London in the mid-1950s, the narrator, a Mrs. Hawkins, describes her life as an overweight war widow trying get by in a city still struggling to recover from the cataclysms of the previous decade. She is a strong, intelligent, sensible woman of a caring nature. However, she has no patience for fools and will apply her rapier wit when the situation demands. Over the course of the novel she loses the extra weight, takes on a number of jobs in the publishing business while helping those in her circle of acquaintances. There are moments of great hilarity and some tinged with sadness. I found Mrs. Hawkins to be great company throughout and will miss her sharp observations, sensible advice and wit. Cheers!
March 9, 2025
Previously I had only read Spark’s Loitering with Intent, which I thought was fantastic, so I have been looking forward to reading more by her. I was not disappointed; I thought A Far Cry from Kensington was wonderful. Mrs. Hawkins quickly became a character I admired for not qualifying her opinions to safeguard her job. I also enjoyed the rich description of time and place, 1954-55 in London.
Mrs. (Nancy) Hawkins is a 28-year-old war widow working for Ullswater & York, a publishing house, as an editor, and living in a rooming house in Kensington. The rooming house is the home for a variety of colorful characters, including Wanda Podolak, a Polish dressmaker. Hector Bartlett is an author in name only; he lacks any skill. He tries to ingratiate himself with Mrs. Hawkins only to be firmly rejected. Because of the backing Bartlett has, Mrs. Hawkins loses her job. Radionics, a highly suspect approach even at that time to healing someone over a distance using a hair or blood sample, was attracting attention and is integral to the plot.
The story and its many interesting characters engaged me early on and held my attention until the end. I have read in other reviews that novels by Muriel Spark can start to feel repetitious. That may be true, however, I haven’t had that feeling yet. I do plan to read more of Muriel Spark so we will see what effect additional doses have on me.
Mrs. (Nancy) Hawkins is a 28-year-old war widow working for Ullswater & York, a publishing house, as an editor, and living in a rooming house in Kensington. The rooming house is the home for a variety of colorful characters, including Wanda Podolak, a Polish dressmaker. Hector Bartlett is an author in name only; he lacks any skill. He tries to ingratiate himself with Mrs. Hawkins only to be firmly rejected. Because of the backing Bartlett has, Mrs. Hawkins loses her job. Radionics, a highly suspect approach even at that time to healing someone over a distance using a hair or blood sample, was attracting attention and is integral to the plot.
The story and its many interesting characters engaged me early on and held my attention until the end. I have read in other reviews that novels by Muriel Spark can start to feel repetitious. That may be true, however, I haven’t had that feeling yet. I do plan to read more of Muriel Spark so we will see what effect additional doses have on me.
February 5, 2015
May be 3 and half stars.
What is it about?
Chapter five begins thus: "I enjoy a puritanical and moralistic nature; it is my happy element to judge between right and wrong, regardless of what I might actually do. At the same time, the wreaking of vengeance and imposing of justice on others and myself are not at all in my line. It is enough for me to discriminate mentally and leave the rest to God."
That seems to be the premise of the book. The time period chosen is 1950s. The location in which the plot is set in is Post war London. (I have a feeling that the British and especially the Londoners, might appreciate this novel better.) The main narrator of the novel is a young war widow who lives in a 'rooming house' along with many tenants and who works in the publishing firm. As she narrates we get to know of many characters. It is not a new fact that each one is a unique person. But the way the narrator(Spark) reveals the character of each person and makes us see the consequences of a single action performed by a character is very typical of Spark. The actions are not that gripping. Because the intention of the author is not giving a plot driven fiction. But rather a fiction of characters in their different colours.
Added to it are the witty and satirical remarks of Spark. Publishing firm being the background, Spark engages in some subtle literary criticisms. Some are very direct. Some are subtle and I did not get to whom they were referring to. There are also some general observations on the art of writing, the publishing firm, the politics involved in bringing out a book, etc.
Another factor that I now come to enjoy in Spark novels is her quest for understanding the religion (Catholicism). It is true, that she began writing novels after her conversion to Catholicism. In the novels, somehow or the other, the question of Catholicism arises. By answering (or trying to answer) such questions, Spark makes us see her own struggle to grapple with the reality of the Super Natural Being. For instance, in this novel she seems to be disturbed of the question regarding the practice of Catholicism. Is it enough just to recite the prescribed prayers at the prescribed time (e.G. Angelus in the Mid-day) to be a good Catholic? Does it not amount to any other superstitious practice which are very similar? She writes in chapter ten thus: "my religion in fact went beyond those Hail Marys which had become merely a superstition to me." Of course, Spark was an intellectual and tried to reason out every practice in the religion. She loved God.
Finally: The more I read Muriel Spark, the more I like her. I will begin another book by her tomorrow.
What is it about?
Chapter five begins thus: "I enjoy a puritanical and moralistic nature; it is my happy element to judge between right and wrong, regardless of what I might actually do. At the same time, the wreaking of vengeance and imposing of justice on others and myself are not at all in my line. It is enough for me to discriminate mentally and leave the rest to God."
That seems to be the premise of the book. The time period chosen is 1950s. The location in which the plot is set in is Post war London. (I have a feeling that the British and especially the Londoners, might appreciate this novel better.) The main narrator of the novel is a young war widow who lives in a 'rooming house' along with many tenants and who works in the publishing firm. As she narrates we get to know of many characters. It is not a new fact that each one is a unique person. But the way the narrator(Spark) reveals the character of each person and makes us see the consequences of a single action performed by a character is very typical of Spark. The actions are not that gripping. Because the intention of the author is not giving a plot driven fiction. But rather a fiction of characters in their different colours.
Added to it are the witty and satirical remarks of Spark. Publishing firm being the background, Spark engages in some subtle literary criticisms. Some are very direct. Some are subtle and I did not get to whom they were referring to. There are also some general observations on the art of writing, the publishing firm, the politics involved in bringing out a book, etc.
Another factor that I now come to enjoy in Spark novels is her quest for understanding the religion (Catholicism). It is true, that she began writing novels after her conversion to Catholicism. In the novels, somehow or the other, the question of Catholicism arises. By answering (or trying to answer) such questions, Spark makes us see her own struggle to grapple with the reality of the Super Natural Being. For instance, in this novel she seems to be disturbed of the question regarding the practice of Catholicism. Is it enough just to recite the prescribed prayers at the prescribed time (e.G. Angelus in the Mid-day) to be a good Catholic? Does it not amount to any other superstitious practice which are very similar? She writes in chapter ten thus: "my religion in fact went beyond those Hail Marys which had become merely a superstition to me." Of course, Spark was an intellectual and tried to reason out every practice in the religion. She loved God.
Finally: The more I read Muriel Spark, the more I like her. I will begin another book by her tomorrow.
August 10, 2011
An absolutely delightful read. What I love about Spark is that each of her novels is entirely different from the next...yet one can always count on a generous dose of charm and wit along with keen observation and insight. And so far (I think I've read five of her novels), A Far Cry rises to the top of the heap.
According to Stannard (Spark's biographer), when the novel appeared, reviewers contented themselves with repeating Mrs. Hawkins' bon mots, her clever advice: The best way to diet is to eat only half of each dish. The best way to write a novel is to imagine you are writing to a friend...For concentration, one required a cat, for a successful relationship, it was wise to start off early and ease off; for rheumatism, a banana a day (half a banana if you're following the diet)...[don't marry] before seeing the fiance drunk.
The novel is highly quotable: 'I had a sense he was offering things abominable to me, like decaffeinated coffee or coitus interruptus.
I love the novel for its lively narrator, Mrs. Hawkins, her smarts and her boldness; she is not to be intimidated and she speaks the truth when no one else does: Hector Bartlett is a pissuer de copie! She delights in doing so, even to his face (and his back). The novel also has an intriguing plot, a mystery of sorts at its center.
Bien fait, Madame Spark!
According to Stannard (Spark's biographer), when the novel appeared, reviewers contented themselves with repeating Mrs. Hawkins' bon mots, her clever advice: The best way to diet is to eat only half of each dish. The best way to write a novel is to imagine you are writing to a friend...For concentration, one required a cat, for a successful relationship, it was wise to start off early and ease off; for rheumatism, a banana a day (half a banana if you're following the diet)...[don't marry] before seeing the fiance drunk.
The novel is highly quotable: 'I had a sense he was offering things abominable to me, like decaffeinated coffee or coitus interruptus.
I love the novel for its lively narrator, Mrs. Hawkins, her smarts and her boldness; she is not to be intimidated and she speaks the truth when no one else does: Hector Bartlett is a pissuer de copie! She delights in doing so, even to his face (and his back). The novel also has an intriguing plot, a mystery of sorts at its center.
Bien fait, Madame Spark!
December 28, 2017
I am happy to report that my second Muriel Spark was simply delightful.
The main protagonist, who as a young war-widow used to live in 1950s in a rooming-house in South Kensington remembers those times and tells us her story. Although at a time she was a young woman, she was always respectfully referred to as mrs Hawkins. Maybe because she was a large woman, maybe because she worked in publishing or maybe because she was the kind of person that everyone turned to, for advice.
The quiet company of tenants in the rooming-house was soon shaken by a blackmail and a suicide and Mrs Hawkins, not surprisingly, found herself in the centre of events. So there is a mystery to be solved, a problem or two in the publishing world, a pinch of occult and a whole lot of personal relations between the characters. Under the leadership of Mrs Hawkins who also appeared to have some personal problems almost everything ends well, and we can rest assured that Dame Muriel Spark is a master of her craft.
The main protagonist, who as a young war-widow used to live in 1950s in a rooming-house in South Kensington remembers those times and tells us her story. Although at a time she was a young woman, she was always respectfully referred to as mrs Hawkins. Maybe because she was a large woman, maybe because she worked in publishing or maybe because she was the kind of person that everyone turned to, for advice.
The quiet company of tenants in the rooming-house was soon shaken by a blackmail and a suicide and Mrs Hawkins, not surprisingly, found herself in the centre of events. So there is a mystery to be solved, a problem or two in the publishing world, a pinch of occult and a whole lot of personal relations between the characters. Under the leadership of Mrs Hawkins who also appeared to have some personal problems almost everything ends well, and we can rest assured that Dame Muriel Spark is a master of her craft.
May 30, 2020
Set in 1954 in London, protagonist Mrs. Hawkins lives in a rooming house with a medical student, a married couple, a nurse, and a dressmaker. Mrs. Hawkins is defined by her “presence” – she is outspoken and gives plenty of advice. Looking back from a distance of thirty years, she narrates the story of her work in publishing, which is negatively impacted by a feud with an unskilled writer. The plot involves the mystery of a threatening letter received by the Polish dressmaker. This book starts as a comedy of manners, but a darker edge emerges later.
Muriel Spark illuminates the politics of the publishers of the past. She pokes fun at the seemingly unattainable “job in publishing” – and the many people who seek it. Themes include truth, transformation, and revenge. I particularly enjoyed the first half of this book, before the darkness sets in. I found it an odd mixture of humor and malevolence. I enjoyed the writing and the dry humor. I was unprepared for its abrupt ending.
Muriel Spark illuminates the politics of the publishers of the past. She pokes fun at the seemingly unattainable “job in publishing” – and the many people who seek it. Themes include truth, transformation, and revenge. I particularly enjoyed the first half of this book, before the darkness sets in. I found it an odd mixture of humor and malevolence. I enjoyed the writing and the dry humor. I was unprepared for its abrupt ending.
January 15, 2016
When someone mentions Muriel Spark, most people say "Ah!, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie". They would be right of course, but her legacy is much deeper than that. She wrote 22 novels, several of them listed on Guardian's 1000 books to read list. And she is #8 on Time's 50 best British authors since 1945. A Far Cry From Kensington is my second Spark novel, so I clap my hands because I have 20 more to look forward to. This novel, set in 1950's London, combines humor, intrique, an amazing character in Mrs. Hawkins, and the "quiet" style of Spark draws the reader to the story, and so we become invested, we care what happens. Thoroughly enjoyable.
October 25, 2025
Rich writing about women attempting to live their lives while constantly needing to tip-toe, adjust the lighting, the mirrors, and fix the settings to manage the look for the oh-so-fragile men who depend completely upon these women yet are constantly trying to destroy them.
It all has to be carefully taught. So carefully taught.
What a delightful read this was.
It is 1955. The time after those wars; wars (I think) no one would have gone off to if they’d had any idea how damaged they’d be when they came back. So hungry, so battered, so ripped off, so rootless. Yet those post-war years were a time when you could reach in and grab something thick and complicated and spend days untangling it without the noise, the chaos we have constantly nagging us now. Because then no one could reach us. Then you could disappear, to untangle something - or try to - and know that when you were done, the world would be, pretty much, the same.
In the USA: your Mexican neighbors would still be there, barbecuing on Sunday, playing wonderful music. That orange grove would still be there to ride through. There’d still be stars at night for thinking in silence. Real stars. That big, ol’ tree would be there for long complicated day dreaming. That.
But this story is set in London, mid-fifties and renters, in a Victorian rooming house with a shared phone as a minor character. The occupants take messages for each other and so are aware of each others’ calls…well, mostly. It’s pretty copacetic until a threatening anonymous letter arrives.
Here, after the war, refugees are desperately trying to carve out lives in a new language, locals are fumbling to create identities with faulty bits, and our narrator - a young war widow - is assumed, apparently, to have tremendous wisdom, especially because she is fat.
This bit of random anatomical variation gave her abundant gravitas, endowed her with almost preternatural sagacity and absolute trustworthiness. Everyone around her agreed. Even though she is only in her mid-twenties everyone called her “Mrs. Hawkins” while others, some considerably older, are referred to by their first names.
I loved that. Great touch.
“How did he know my name? I didn’t know his. People always knew who I was before I knew them, in those days. Later, when I got thin I had to take my chance with everyone else; and this confirms my impression that a great large girl is definitely a somebody, whatever she loses by way of romantic encounters.”
Her decision to tell an irritating conceit of a manboy who is pestering her what she actually thinks of him, and his writing - under her breath, and in passing - as he harasses her in a public park sets off a series of events that definitely required untangling. Egads! The very idea of a female actually Not Being Nice to a male!
Her subsequent decision to lose weight further complicates others’ perceptions in such devastatingly silly ways. But we cannot control those perceptions, can we? Best to ignore them.
This is a very funny book, sprinkled with moments of great poignancy.
One hilarious scene is a serious gathering of most of house’s residents to assist the calamitously unprepared, unwed, pregnant Isobel Lederer at the request of her overly solicitous and wealthy father, Hugh:
“Kate offered to look for a flat for Isobel. William wrote down the name of a gynaecologist. Eva Carlin agreed, on thinking it over, that Isobel shouldn’t marry a man she wasn’t in love with. Basil Carlin in a grave voice implored Hugh Lederer to persuade his daughter to go straight from now on. I agreed to be the godmother. Isobel said she hadn’t been to see “A Star is Born”, is it any good? Hugh Lederer said he appreciated very much our solidarity with Isobel, which he hoped would continue. The meeting was over. Everyone left in a friendly spirit.”
On another occasion, Emma Loy, a successful novelist is trying to fob off one of her hangers on, (trying to get rid of Hector):
“I don’t at all want to get rid of Hector. In fact I shall miss him very much…He knows all my works by heart. He can quote chapter and verse, any of my novels. It’s amazing.”
“Does he quote it right?”
“No. He generally gets it wrong, I’ll admit. But his dedication to me is there….”
But then, oh Muriel, such a genius, just when I’m giggling at your snark and feminist ideation, you gut punch me with a beautiful short bit on a character who grew up very poor, in “dire want and wretched slum poverty” and so was deprived of all nursery rhymes and fairy stories, the very whimsy that feeds me daily:
“…all that sweet lyricism of our Anglo-Saxon childhood, a whole culture with rings on its fingers and bells on its toes, had been lost to him in that infancy of slums and smelly drains, rats and pawnshops…curses, rags and hacking coughs, freezing bare feet and no Prince Charmings, which had been the lot of the really poor in the years between the first and second world wars. I had never before realized how the very poor people of the cities had been deprived of their own simple folklore of childhood.”
Today I read that the majority of children in South Sudan are working in essentially slave labor, indentured servitude, with no chance of education. (25 Oct. 2025. Al Jazeera story by Faisal Ali).
Which makes me want to share another scene. While our dear Mrs. Hawkins was between jobs at publishing houses she would walk around London or ride the buses:
“So I spent my days after days on the top of the buses staring out of the window and watching with discreet eyes my fellow passengers, most of them shabby, and, if they were not alone, listening with half an ear to their talk, mostly about their families and friends, their shopping and their jobs; and not once in all these long rides did I hear a snatch of conversation about a general topic.”
There’s a big world out there.
How lucky are most of us to have “a whole culture with rings on its fingers and bells on its toes” to call upon?
It all has to be carefully taught. So carefully taught.
What a delightful read this was.
It is 1955. The time after those wars; wars (I think) no one would have gone off to if they’d had any idea how damaged they’d be when they came back. So hungry, so battered, so ripped off, so rootless. Yet those post-war years were a time when you could reach in and grab something thick and complicated and spend days untangling it without the noise, the chaos we have constantly nagging us now. Because then no one could reach us. Then you could disappear, to untangle something - or try to - and know that when you were done, the world would be, pretty much, the same.
In the USA: your Mexican neighbors would still be there, barbecuing on Sunday, playing wonderful music. That orange grove would still be there to ride through. There’d still be stars at night for thinking in silence. Real stars. That big, ol’ tree would be there for long complicated day dreaming. That.
But this story is set in London, mid-fifties and renters, in a Victorian rooming house with a shared phone as a minor character. The occupants take messages for each other and so are aware of each others’ calls…well, mostly. It’s pretty copacetic until a threatening anonymous letter arrives.
Here, after the war, refugees are desperately trying to carve out lives in a new language, locals are fumbling to create identities with faulty bits, and our narrator - a young war widow - is assumed, apparently, to have tremendous wisdom, especially because she is fat.
This bit of random anatomical variation gave her abundant gravitas, endowed her with almost preternatural sagacity and absolute trustworthiness. Everyone around her agreed. Even though she is only in her mid-twenties everyone called her “Mrs. Hawkins” while others, some considerably older, are referred to by their first names.
I loved that. Great touch.
“How did he know my name? I didn’t know his. People always knew who I was before I knew them, in those days. Later, when I got thin I had to take my chance with everyone else; and this confirms my impression that a great large girl is definitely a somebody, whatever she loses by way of romantic encounters.”
Her decision to tell an irritating conceit of a manboy who is pestering her what she actually thinks of him, and his writing - under her breath, and in passing - as he harasses her in a public park sets off a series of events that definitely required untangling. Egads! The very idea of a female actually Not Being Nice to a male!
Her subsequent decision to lose weight further complicates others’ perceptions in such devastatingly silly ways. But we cannot control those perceptions, can we? Best to ignore them.
This is a very funny book, sprinkled with moments of great poignancy.
One hilarious scene is a serious gathering of most of house’s residents to assist the calamitously unprepared, unwed, pregnant Isobel Lederer at the request of her overly solicitous and wealthy father, Hugh:
“Kate offered to look for a flat for Isobel. William wrote down the name of a gynaecologist. Eva Carlin agreed, on thinking it over, that Isobel shouldn’t marry a man she wasn’t in love with. Basil Carlin in a grave voice implored Hugh Lederer to persuade his daughter to go straight from now on. I agreed to be the godmother. Isobel said she hadn’t been to see “A Star is Born”, is it any good? Hugh Lederer said he appreciated very much our solidarity with Isobel, which he hoped would continue. The meeting was over. Everyone left in a friendly spirit.”
On another occasion, Emma Loy, a successful novelist is trying to fob off one of her hangers on, (trying to get rid of Hector):
“I don’t at all want to get rid of Hector. In fact I shall miss him very much…He knows all my works by heart. He can quote chapter and verse, any of my novels. It’s amazing.”
“Does he quote it right?”
“No. He generally gets it wrong, I’ll admit. But his dedication to me is there….”
But then, oh Muriel, such a genius, just when I’m giggling at your snark and feminist ideation, you gut punch me with a beautiful short bit on a character who grew up very poor, in “dire want and wretched slum poverty” and so was deprived of all nursery rhymes and fairy stories, the very whimsy that feeds me daily:
“…all that sweet lyricism of our Anglo-Saxon childhood, a whole culture with rings on its fingers and bells on its toes, had been lost to him in that infancy of slums and smelly drains, rats and pawnshops…curses, rags and hacking coughs, freezing bare feet and no Prince Charmings, which had been the lot of the really poor in the years between the first and second world wars. I had never before realized how the very poor people of the cities had been deprived of their own simple folklore of childhood.”
Today I read that the majority of children in South Sudan are working in essentially slave labor, indentured servitude, with no chance of education. (25 Oct. 2025. Al Jazeera story by Faisal Ali).
Which makes me want to share another scene. While our dear Mrs. Hawkins was between jobs at publishing houses she would walk around London or ride the buses:
“So I spent my days after days on the top of the buses staring out of the window and watching with discreet eyes my fellow passengers, most of them shabby, and, if they were not alone, listening with half an ear to their talk, mostly about their families and friends, their shopping and their jobs; and not once in all these long rides did I hear a snatch of conversation about a general topic.”
There’s a big world out there.
How lucky are most of us to have “a whole culture with rings on its fingers and bells on its toes” to call upon?
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