The Finishing School (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Muriel Spark
- First Published: 2004
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 2004
- Setting: Ouchy, Switzerland
- Principal Characters: Rowland Mahler, Nina Mahler, Chris Wiley, Elaine Valette, Célestine Valette, Albert Hertz, Pallas Kapelas, Lionel Haas, Pansy (“Leg”) Leghorn, Princess Tilley, Opal Gross, Mary Foot, Israel Brown, Giovanna Brown
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Teaching or teachers, Teenagers, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Authors or writers, Schools or school life, Jealousy, envy, or resentment, Novelists, Students or student life, Switzerland or Swiss people, Private schools, 2000’s
- Locales: Switzerland
Muriel Spark's latest novel, The Finishing School, is very short and concise, like most of her other novels. Also like them, it focuses on some of the meanest traits of human nature, here a particular kind of envy and jealousy that one aspiring writer has for another. The irony—and Spark is a masterful ironist—is that the jealousy is that of a headmaster for one of his students. Rowland Mahler is trying to write a novel and becomes obsessively envious of Chris Wiley, who is also writing a novel—about the way Henry, Lord Darnley, husband to Mary Queen of Scots, was murdered....
[The entire page is 1791 words long]
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