Description
Book SynopsisThe Bachelors displays the best of Sparkian satire, placing her at the heart of a great literary tradition alongside Waugh and Trollope, Wilde and Wodehouse. It demands rediscovery.
'It's easy to see why Waugh admired The Bachelors. On one level, it is a blithely carnivorous satire in the Waugh mould. The bachelors of the title - almost the only men we meet in the narrative - are the thirty-something male barristers, teachers, journalists and museum attendants of a small patch of West London. They lead inturned, doddery, superannuated lives, pottering between grocers, coffee-houses, bedsits and the houses of their mothers and aunts. But the comedy here is serious in a way that Waugh's satanically energetic comedies of misery rarely are . . . comedies of English manners have seldom been darker' Daily Telegraph
'My admiration for Spark's contribution to world literature knows no bounds. She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent - the crème de la crème' Ian Rankin
'Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards, decisive as a smashed glass is decisive' John Updike, New Yorker
Trade ReviewA wholly original presence in modern literature -- ANDREW MOTION
Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards, decisive as a smashed glass is decisive -- JOHN UPDIKE * * New Yorker * *
I am dazzled by
The Bachelors. It is the cleverest and most elegant of all Mrs Spark's clever and elegant books -- EVELYN WAUGH
She has a receptive and wholly distinctive genius -- A N WILSON * * Spectator * *
My admiration for Spark's contribution to world literature knows no bounds. She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent - the crème de la crème -- IAN RANKIN
A profoundly serious comic writer whose wit advances, never undermines or diminishes, her ideas * * New York Times Book Review * *
The care with which she uses words is matched by a gloriously carefree attitude. It's all part of her sanity, her breezy authorial self-confidence; and because of this I think that reading a blast of her prose every morning is a far more restorative way to start a day than a shot of espresso * * Daily Telegraph * *
Spark is a natural, a paradigm of that rare sort of artist from whom work of the highest quality flows as elementally as current through a circuit * * New Yorker * *
It's easy to see why Waugh admired
The Bachelors. But the comedy here is serious in a way that Waugh's satanically energetic comedies of misery rarely are . . . comedies of English manners have rarely been darker * * Daily Telegraph * *
