MURIEL SPARK: THE BIOGRAPHY BY MARTIN STANNARD, PHOENIX, $29.99.
Muriel Spark was an imaginative child brought up in a bookless Edinburgh household in the 1920s. The curious 11-year-old laid the foundations for her best-selling 1961 novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the moment she walked into Christina Kay’s classroom at the James Gillespie’s School for Girls.
Brodie’s famous remark that her girls were the “crème de la crème” was originally Miss Kay’s. Biographer Stannard fills this brilliant bio with the intensity of Muriel the artist, who “wanted wide readership while refusing to pander to popular taste”. A “terrible mistake” of a marriage at 19 resulted in a son and separation, then an independent career in London and success in New York. Yet melancholy often defeated Muriel, who found peace with her companion, artist Penelope Jardine, at a palazzo in Italy during her final years. She died in 2006, Jardine at her side.
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
