Spark, Muriel (Vol. 3) - Spark, Muriel 1918–
Spark, Muriel 1918–
A Scottish novelist, poet, short story writer, playwright, biographer, and poet, Ms. Spark is highly regarded for her witty, sometimes bizarre, often elegant, fiction. Although she is probably best known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, many critics consider The Mandelbaum Gate her masterpiece. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)
[There] is a difference between a Catholic who writes novels and a Catholic Novelist. This latter term evokes, even if it shouldn't, an unholy mixture of the Claudelic, the Mauriacesque and the Greenean, a browbeating either direct or indirect, a stifling odour of incense or of fallen sweat or of both. Mrs. Spark's writing seems to me altogether dissimilar: even a lapsed Wesleyan can approach her without too painful a sense of intimidation or exclusion. Yet most discussion in print of Mrs. Spark's work centres on her Catholicism—and rarely gets far away from it....
[The entire page is 5150 words long]
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