Mark’s Reviews > Muriel Spark: The Biography > Status Update

"The reality of the dream which is artistic vision, the dream of reality which is self-justifying vanity"

"The Italians regarded her as a Kafka in a skirt. She saw herself as Lucrezia Borgia in trousers".........

Fascinating chapter on "The Driver's seat" which is perhaps my least favourite of her novels. I am intrigued, maybe I shall have to remove it from my 'never again' shelf

On "The Public Image" one critic wrote 'an atom bomb in an attache case'

Alan Pryce-Jones on our Muriel:- "beautifully constructed with Mozartian precision. The world in her eyes is as formal and lively as a ballroom but it is a ballroom which at any moment may burst into flames." I am sure she liked that one.

Lionel Trilling in conversation with Muriel. "You must read 'The Ballad of Peckham Rye' " With what must have taken enormous restraint it appears Spark simply said "I wrote it". Awkward

On her father's death " my father's funeral was our first warm day. A man he did not like fell into his grave........ He had more affection for me than anyone else, so that is gone out of the world". There is something heartbreakingly lovely about this.

Excellent reflection on "memento mori", my favourite Spark novel