I liked this book in a not especially passionate way. Its scenes are pleasingly quotidian and feel like an authentic representation of literary life in London during the 1950s. The plot strikes a good balance between the mundane realities of day to day life and the necessity to include some events of a more exceptional character to drive the narrative. These events were well chosen and not overly far-fetched or ostentatious. Almost all of them relate to a character called Hector Bartlett, the boyfriend / hanger on of a more famous writer, who tries to persuade the protagonist, Nancy Hawkins, who works at a publisher, to accept his essays or make introduction to otherwise further his career. Nancy dislikes Hector immensely and calls him a ‘pissuer de copie’ on two occassions, both of which cause her to lose her job. In fact, the first time she loses her job it might be because the publisher went bust. I can’t remember. However, she definitely uses the insult twice and it causes much consternation in both cases hence my confusion. After this, when Nancy is working at her third job of the novel, one of her fellow inmates from their rooming house in South Kensington commits suicide. After going through the deceased woman’s effect and ruminating on the subject with the rooming house owner, Nancy discovers that Hector may have had some part in this suicide by seducing the woman in question and persuading her to operate a ‘box’ used in the psuedoscience of radionics. The woman was chosen because of her proximity to Nancy because Hector wants to use the box to adversely affect her. Hector later corroborates this in an article he writes about the experience for a radionics journal. Nothing much comes of this as none of her evidence is conclusive and I like the way the author avoided the temptation to make the book into a hunt to bring him to justice. After these excitements, Nancy sleeps with another fellow inmate from the rooming house, starts dating him and then they both move out and get married.
As I mentioned before, I liked the tone of the narrative and felt like it struck a good balance between plausibility and intrigue while avoiding the temptation to use the narrative to make the book more sensational. I also liked some of the bits and pieces that were used to construct the book, especially the radionics and the centrality to the plot of the excellent phrase ‘pissuer de copie’. Taken as a whole, the book is a blatant piece of self-promotion by the protagonist and there was a pleasing uncertainty lingering around the credibility of the account, which I enjoyed. I didn’t feel like the characters were really strong and none of them left a strong impression after I finished the book. Perhaps this is because the book is only 180 pages or so and it’s harder to develop characters in this format versus, say, an 800 page Dickens book spanning a decade or two. I also wasn’t wild about the setting for the book. I feel like I read a disproportionate number of books about the literary world, maybe for obvious reasons, and because of this the genre feels a bit overused to me. By the same token, perhaps it is a little churlish to praise a book for its ambience of reality and then criticise the author for writing about a subject they are familiar with. The prose was one of the best aspects of the book. It was clear and concise with occasional flourishes but not of a floral or pretentious kind. I enjoyed reading it and felt it was well paced and skillfully constructed.
Overall this wasn’t a book I would rave about or necessarily recommend widely. However, it was an enjoyable and well crafted novel that was a pleasure to read. It did make me want to read more Muriel Spark so perhaps I’m undervaluing it!
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