9 results for "Novel"

The comforters

Spark, Muriel
Caroline Rose is plagued by the tapping of typewriter keys and the strange, detached narration of her every thought and action. Caroline has an unusual problem - she realises she is in a novel. Her fellow characters also seem deluded: Laurence, her former lover, finds diamonds in a loaf of bread - has his elderly grandmother hidden them there? And Baron Stock, her bookseller friend, believes he is on the trail of England's leading Satanist. In Muriel Spark's brilliant first novel, the only things that aren't ambiguous are her matchless originality and glittering wit.
ISIS 2010 257 pages

The abbess of Crewe

Spark, Muriel
It is time to elect a new abbess at the Convent of Crewe. There are two contenders: nuns Alexandra and Felicity. Alexandra is busy bugging the convent while Felicity calls the police when her love letters (to a young Jesuit priest) are stolen. A brilliant laugh-out-loud satire on the Watergate scandal.This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions between November 2017 and September 2018.
Polygon 2018 88 pages

The finishing school

Spark, Muriel
From Muriel Spark, the grande dame of literary satire, comes this swift, deliciously witty tale of writerly ambition that recalls her beloved The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. College Sunrise is a somewhat louche and vaguely disreputable finishing school located, for now, in Lausanne, Switzerland. Rowland Mahler and his wife, Nina, run the school as a way to support themselves while he works, somewhat falteringly, on his novel. Into Rowland’s creative writing class comes seventeen-year-old Chris Wiley, a red-haired literary prodigy whose historical novel-in-progress, on Mary Queen of Scots, has already excited the interest of publishers. The inevitable result: keen envy, and a game of cat and mouse fraught with jealousy and attraction, both literary and sexual.
Viking 2004 192 pages

Robinson

Spark, Muriel
January Marlow, a heroine with a Catholic outlook of the most unsentimental stripe, is one of three survivors out of twenty-nine souls when her plane crashes, blazing, on Robinson's island. Presumed dead for months, the three survivors must wait for the annual return of the pomegranate boat. Robinson, a determined loner, proves a fair if misanthropic host to his uninvited guests; he encourages January to keep a journal: as "an occupation for my mind, and I fancied that I might later dress it up for a novel. That was most peculiar, as things transpired, for I did not then anticipate how the journal would turn upon me, so that having survived the plane disaster, I should nearly meet my death through it." In Robinson, Muriel Spark's wonderful second novel, under the tropical glare and strange fogs of the tiny island, we find a volcano, a ping-pong playing cat, a dealer in occult as well as lucky charms, flying ants, sexual tension, a disappearance, blackmail, andperhapsmurder. Everything astounds, confounds, and convinces, frighteningly. "She is," as Charles Alva Hoyt once put it, "the Jane Austen of the Surrealists." Robinson, a unique and marvelous novel, is another display of the powers of "the most gifted and innovative British novelist" (The New York Times). In the work of Dame Murielin the last words of Robinson "immediately all things are possible."
New Directions 2003 174 pages

The bachelors

Spark, Muriel
Spiritualist and extortionist Patrick Seton is coming up for trial. He's been accused of forgery, and suddenly West London's bachelors are all in a tizzy. Described by Evelyn Waugh as the 'cleverest and most elegant of all Mrs Spark's clever and elegant books', The Bachelors is a biting comedy of English manners.This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions between November 2017 and September 2018.
Polygon 2018 236 pages

The takeover

Spark, Muriel
Italy, the setting an enchanted lake southeast of Rome, and American heiress Maggie - famed for her beauty, wealth and steely will - is thetarget for an assortment of con men, jewel thieves, counterfeiters, adulterers and spongers. A dazzling, pacy thriller.This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions betweenNovember 2017 and September 2018.
Polygon 2018 239 pages

The only problem

Spark, Muriel
Wealthy Canadian scholar Harvey Gotham lives in splendid isolation in France and is working on a book about Job. He loves his wife, Effie,dearly but she has taken to planting bombs in supermarkets and has joined an anarchist group. Here, Spark returns to the Book of Job, whichhad always fascinated her, and 'the only problem' - the problem of suffering. Why does God allow it? A despairing and exhilarating read, TheOnly Problem is a masterwork.This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions betweenNovember 2017 and September 2018.
Polygon 2018 156 pages