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Loitering with Intent
"How wonderful to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century," Fleur Talbot rejoices. Happily loitering about London, c. 1949, with intent to gather material for her writing, Fleur finds a job "on the grubby edge of the literary world," as secretary to the peculiar Autobiographical Association. Mad egomaniacs, hilariously writing their memoirs in advance—or poor fools ensnared by a blackmailer? Rich material, in any case. But when its pompous director, Sir Quentin Oliver, steals the manuscript of Fleur's new novel, fiction begins to appropriate life. The association's members begin to act out scenes exactly as Fleur herself has already written them in her missing manuscript. And as they meet darkly funny, pre-visioned fates, where does art start or reality end?
224 pages, Paperback
First published May 22, 1981
187 people are currently reading
6177 people want to read
About the author
Muriel Spark
209 books1,251 followersDame Muriel Spark, DBE was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.
Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.
Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.
Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.
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May 1, 2025
A total Lark! This one beguiled an incipient February's depression into thinking snow is wonderful - at least for the kids outside building snowforts...
Sir Quentin's an odd old codger, but his Biographical Society seems quite above board to young Fleur, a penniless budding novelist. But draft novels don't pay the gas bill.
Writing biographies - cushy job?
Think again, little Fleur. All is not Quite what it seems. Quentin is in fact a black-hearted blackmailer.
Sir Quentin seems fit only for SAN Quentin.
Makes a girl think! Anyway, Fleur tries to get the goods on this geezer.
Hang on to your hats, folks.
Miss Spark lives up to her name - she can start a conflagration.
You're in for a Wild Ride in this one!
Sir Quentin's an odd old codger, but his Biographical Society seems quite above board to young Fleur, a penniless budding novelist. But draft novels don't pay the gas bill.
Writing biographies - cushy job?
Think again, little Fleur. All is not Quite what it seems. Quentin is in fact a black-hearted blackmailer.
Sir Quentin seems fit only for SAN Quentin.
Makes a girl think! Anyway, Fleur tries to get the goods on this geezer.
Hang on to your hats, folks.
Miss Spark lives up to her name - she can start a conflagration.
You're in for a Wild Ride in this one!
Read
July 12, 2024When I woke up this morning, a tiny fragment of dream lingered in my mind. I quickly grabbed what I could of it and stored it in a safe place — in my experience, such fragments can come in handy, as, for example, when I'm at a loss for an angle to begin a review.
And so it has proved in this case, one way or another, because what's immediately relevant here is that Muriel Spark, or at least the narrator of this book, Fleur Talbot, is constantly storing up fragments of life for future use in her novels. Not dreams perhaps, but people—their characters, speech and actions. She stealthily observes the individuals around her as a pigeon observes the ground beneath a park bench, ready to pounce on any scraps that may fall.
Fleur is quite frank about all this loitering with intent: At the meeting I gave close attention to the six members without ever actually studying them with my eyes. I always preferred what I saw out of the corners of my eyes, so to speak.
She also seems to use her eyes when listening: Dutifully now, I kept my eyes on his words..
No matter what drama is going on around her, she is unperturbed, coolly picking up any colorful phrases that get left behind. Apparently the switchboard was in process of repair and a man was working overtime on it. ‘The board’s asunder,’ bellowed the boy. I liked the phrase and picked it out for myself from the wreckage of the moment, as was my wont.
The wreckage of that particular moment is only one of the many wreckages in this book. Fleur is struggling to finish her first novel under difficult circumstances, and soon finds that her life and her writing have become entwined in very odd ways, with wreckages abounding not only in the pages of her novel but in real life as well.
But Fleur is an unreliable narrator, and the reader doesn't know if she is converting real life into fiction or if real life has converted her fiction into reality.
It's interesting to note that Spark's own first novel, The Comforters, which I haven't yet read, is about a writer who finds out that she herself is a character in a book. The border between reality and fiction is clearly something Spark enjoyed playing with, and I'm looking forward to discovering more of her inventiveness as I make my way through her long list of books.
I'm also looking forward to discovering more of the pithy remarks she drops into the text here and there. This one, for instance, caught my own beady eye:
It it not to be supposed that the stamp and feeling of a novel can be conveyed by an intellectual summary. I smiled at that.
I smiled a lot while reading this book — there's humour on every page.
Here's another scrap I feasted on: She was looking at me without really noticing my presence. For a moment I felt like a grey figment, the ‘I’ of a novel whose physical description the author had decided not to set forth. I was still, of course, weak from my ’flu...
Apart from the 'flu jab, what I enjoyed most in that excerpt is the reminder of the games the writer is playing in the background. Spark hasn't given the reader any physical description of the narrator. 'Flu or no 'flu, Fleur is quite an opaque 'I'.
Speaking of the opaque, the dream fragment I saved this morning might serve for more than an opening angle; I feel I can recycle it to close this review of the very clever book that is Loitering with Intent.
What I managed to save were these words: ...the vocation of a pigeon...
And so it has proved in this case, one way or another, because what's immediately relevant here is that Muriel Spark, or at least the narrator of this book, Fleur Talbot, is constantly storing up fragments of life for future use in her novels. Not dreams perhaps, but people—their characters, speech and actions. She stealthily observes the individuals around her as a pigeon observes the ground beneath a park bench, ready to pounce on any scraps that may fall.
Fleur is quite frank about all this loitering with intent: At the meeting I gave close attention to the six members without ever actually studying them with my eyes. I always preferred what I saw out of the corners of my eyes, so to speak.
She also seems to use her eyes when listening: Dutifully now, I kept my eyes on his words..
No matter what drama is going on around her, she is unperturbed, coolly picking up any colorful phrases that get left behind. Apparently the switchboard was in process of repair and a man was working overtime on it. ‘The board’s asunder,’ bellowed the boy. I liked the phrase and picked it out for myself from the wreckage of the moment, as was my wont.
The wreckage of that particular moment is only one of the many wreckages in this book. Fleur is struggling to finish her first novel under difficult circumstances, and soon finds that her life and her writing have become entwined in very odd ways, with wreckages abounding not only in the pages of her novel but in real life as well.
But Fleur is an unreliable narrator, and the reader doesn't know if she is converting real life into fiction or if real life has converted her fiction into reality.
It's interesting to note that Spark's own first novel, The Comforters, which I haven't yet read, is about a writer who finds out that she herself is a character in a book. The border between reality and fiction is clearly something Spark enjoyed playing with, and I'm looking forward to discovering more of her inventiveness as I make my way through her long list of books.
I'm also looking forward to discovering more of the pithy remarks she drops into the text here and there. This one, for instance, caught my own beady eye:
It it not to be supposed that the stamp and feeling of a novel can be conveyed by an intellectual summary. I smiled at that.
I smiled a lot while reading this book — there's humour on every page.
Here's another scrap I feasted on: She was looking at me without really noticing my presence. For a moment I felt like a grey figment, the ‘I’ of a novel whose physical description the author had decided not to set forth. I was still, of course, weak from my ’flu...
Apart from the 'flu jab, what I enjoyed most in that excerpt is the reminder of the games the writer is playing in the background. Spark hasn't given the reader any physical description of the narrator. 'Flu or no 'flu, Fleur is quite an opaque 'I'.
Speaking of the opaque, the dream fragment I saved this morning might serve for more than an opening angle; I feel I can recycle it to close this review of the very clever book that is Loitering with Intent.
What I managed to save were these words: ...the vocation of a pigeon...
May 6, 2019
My first Muriel Spark. And I feel like I've finally discovered another British female author of genius. The most deliciously witty and clever book I've read all year. And what fabulous characters! It reminded me a bit of Nabokov, the hall of mirrors she creates around her narrator. One of the interesting things she said in a documentary I recently watched about her was that every book has a hidden author and that one of the first tasks of the writer is to work out who is writing the novel. She does a masterful job of dramatizing this narrator-behind-the-narrator conundrum in this book. I now have a plan for the remainder of 2019 - to read the other twenty-four Muriel Spark novels. Huge thanks to Fionnuala for giving me the nudge.
April 23, 2025
FLEUR TALBOT
Fotografia di Lee Miller, autrice anche dello scatto in copertina.
Ho un amore particolare per la letteratura inglese. Perché mi piace, e mi diverte, perché sa sorprendermi, perché nella maggior parte dei casi sa restare bene in equilibrio tra forma e contenuto, perché anche quando si fa più sperimentale non si dimentica del lettore. Il rispetto del lettore…
E forse è stato Evelyn Waugh a farmi scattare questa molla. Che presto è diventata un solido legame grazie a Graham Greene, Henry Green, Ivy Compton-Burnett, ecc. Tutte letture degli anni verdi.
Forse è presto per dirlo, sono solo al secondo incontro, ma mi verrebbe da inserire Muriel Spark in questa tradizione.
Scrive dannatamente bene, è molto spiritosa, diverte intrattiene e fa pensare, costruisce storie che agganciano, non vuol fare rivoluzioni ma neppure tirarsi indietro.
Qui, per esempio, riesce a costruire uno scherzoso thriller, quasi una spy story, con elementi di partenza che farebbero pensare a tutt’altro. Chissà, forse attinge alla sua esperienza diretta (durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale lavorò per i servizi segreti britannici, come svariati suoi colleghi scrittori).
Lo ambienta nel secondo dopoguerra, in epoca di ricostruzione e razionamenti.
E sorprende come irrida il bigottismo cattolico di un personaggio, proprio lei che si convertì al cattolicesimo nel 1954, avendo come sponsor due celebri e illustri colleghi come Evelyn Waugh e Graham Greene (che le fu collega anche nei servizi segreti, Greene al controspionaggio – MI6 – Spark al MI5 – grazie a James Bond siamo tutti esperti dello spionaggio britannico).
Ma scherzoso irridente sbeffeggiante, che dir si voglia, questo Loitering with Intent (letteralmente: vagabondando con intenzione, con uno scopo preciso), è prima di tutto una magistrale mise en abîme, storia nella storia, dove gli elementi autobiografici diventano specchio di quelli della trama di finzione, li incorniciano per così dire, replicano e riproducono in un infernale gioco di specchi, meta-romanzo.
L’atteggiamento sospetto è quello del datore di lavoro della protagonista io-narrante, la giovane Fleur Talbot, aspirante romanziera con all’attivo una manciata di poesie pubblicate su riviste: viene assunta per fare da segreteria a una fantomatica associazione dedita all’autobiografia. Mentre scopre che l’atteggiamento sospetto del fondatore e suo datore di lavoro è quello di ricattare i soci dell’associazione proprio grazie alle notizie riservate contenute nelle varie autobiografie, Fleur si accorge che il suo romanzo e l’intera situazione relativa all’associazione si vanno assomigliando sempre più: lei ha cominciato a scrivere prima di essere assunta, possibile che le sue pagine abbiano il potere di influenzare la realtà?
Fotografia di Lee Miller, autrice anche dello scatto in copertina.
Ho un amore particolare per la letteratura inglese. Perché mi piace, e mi diverte, perché sa sorprendermi, perché nella maggior parte dei casi sa restare bene in equilibrio tra forma e contenuto, perché anche quando si fa più sperimentale non si dimentica del lettore. Il rispetto del lettore…
E forse è stato Evelyn Waugh a farmi scattare questa molla. Che presto è diventata un solido legame grazie a Graham Greene, Henry Green, Ivy Compton-Burnett, ecc. Tutte letture degli anni verdi.
Forse è presto per dirlo, sono solo al secondo incontro, ma mi verrebbe da inserire Muriel Spark in questa tradizione.
Scrive dannatamente bene, è molto spiritosa, diverte intrattiene e fa pensare, costruisce storie che agganciano, non vuol fare rivoluzioni ma neppure tirarsi indietro.
Qui, per esempio, riesce a costruire uno scherzoso thriller, quasi una spy story, con elementi di partenza che farebbero pensare a tutt’altro. Chissà, forse attinge alla sua esperienza diretta (durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale lavorò per i servizi segreti britannici, come svariati suoi colleghi scrittori).
Lo ambienta nel secondo dopoguerra, in epoca di ricostruzione e razionamenti.
E sorprende come irrida il bigottismo cattolico di un personaggio, proprio lei che si convertì al cattolicesimo nel 1954, avendo come sponsor due celebri e illustri colleghi come Evelyn Waugh e Graham Greene (che le fu collega anche nei servizi segreti, Greene al controspionaggio – MI6 – Spark al MI5 – grazie a James Bond siamo tutti esperti dello spionaggio britannico).
Ma scherzoso irridente sbeffeggiante, che dir si voglia, questo Loitering with Intent (letteralmente: vagabondando con intenzione, con uno scopo preciso), è prima di tutto una magistrale mise en abîme, storia nella storia, dove gli elementi autobiografici diventano specchio di quelli della trama di finzione, li incorniciano per così dire, replicano e riproducono in un infernale gioco di specchi, meta-romanzo.
L’atteggiamento sospetto è quello del datore di lavoro della protagonista io-narrante, la giovane Fleur Talbot, aspirante romanziera con all’attivo una manciata di poesie pubblicate su riviste: viene assunta per fare da segreteria a una fantomatica associazione dedita all’autobiografia. Mentre scopre che l’atteggiamento sospetto del fondatore e suo datore di lavoro è quello di ricattare i soci dell’associazione proprio grazie alle notizie riservate contenute nelle varie autobiografie, Fleur si accorge che il suo romanzo e l’intera situazione relativa all’associazione si vanno assomigliando sempre più: lei ha cominciato a scrivere prima di essere assunta, possibile che le sue pagine abbiano il potere di influenzare la realtà?
April 26, 2025
Does an artist need to be honest? If I asked each of you to make a list of 50 adjectives describing yourselves and then share it with one another, a couple of things would happen:
1) You’d find opposites on your list, often one after the other: “lazy; conscientious; social; private; optimistic; skeptical; hurt; guarded; open; accepting; impatient — you get the idea.
Another thing that would happen, when listening to others, is:
2) Some adjective they included will hit you in the gut, and you’ll be surprised you’d forgotten it.
So, then, how can a writer portray a character honestly? How would an actor convey this level of complexity? If an artist must be honest, how does one touch others?
In Loitering With Intent, Spark asks us to consider the precision of choice as a way to sculpt a greater truth. An artist must be honest, yes, but part of being an artist is making specific choices so that a deeper meaning is conveyed. The more selective an artist becomes, the more unique to them their work. Honesty can be too many things at once.
And yet, how can we inform without drawing from our own lives? And since others exist with us in these lives, how can we help but draw from them? Is there any perception of ours that exists without some fiction, some projection or interpretation? Are we ever wholly ourselves without carrying the influences of others? Where is that line?
For me, this is what Loitering with Intent was about.
There’s a bit of history here as well, as Spark explores issues of class and privilege in post-WWll London. And for those of you who are cult-curious, there’s a hint of one here, too. Don’t get too excited about that last bit, though, as our protagonist is more like the child in The Emperor’s New Clothes than a cult victim.
Spark chiseled her language and structure with such precision it awed me. And with a great deal of wit, she played with our perceptions. Add to this an irreverent female protagonist ahead of her time, and she had me eating from her hand.
I thought I loved The Driver’s Seat, but this far surpassed that. I highly recommend this slim but full work. It can be read in a day, or delighted in its sentences over and over.
I read this with the incomparably insightful Violeta and Charles, and adored our exchange. Here is Violeta's review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Charles' to come...
1) You’d find opposites on your list, often one after the other: “lazy; conscientious; social; private; optimistic; skeptical; hurt; guarded; open; accepting; impatient — you get the idea.
Another thing that would happen, when listening to others, is:
2) Some adjective they included will hit you in the gut, and you’ll be surprised you’d forgotten it.
So, then, how can a writer portray a character honestly? How would an actor convey this level of complexity? If an artist must be honest, how does one touch others?
In Loitering With Intent, Spark asks us to consider the precision of choice as a way to sculpt a greater truth. An artist must be honest, yes, but part of being an artist is making specific choices so that a deeper meaning is conveyed. The more selective an artist becomes, the more unique to them their work. Honesty can be too many things at once.
And yet, how can we inform without drawing from our own lives? And since others exist with us in these lives, how can we help but draw from them? Is there any perception of ours that exists without some fiction, some projection or interpretation? Are we ever wholly ourselves without carrying the influences of others? Where is that line?
For me, this is what Loitering with Intent was about.
There’s a bit of history here as well, as Spark explores issues of class and privilege in post-WWll London. And for those of you who are cult-curious, there’s a hint of one here, too. Don’t get too excited about that last bit, though, as our protagonist is more like the child in The Emperor’s New Clothes than a cult victim.
Spark chiseled her language and structure with such precision it awed me. And with a great deal of wit, she played with our perceptions. Add to this an irreverent female protagonist ahead of her time, and she had me eating from her hand.
I thought I loved The Driver’s Seat, but this far surpassed that. I highly recommend this slim but full work. It can be read in a day, or delighted in its sentences over and over.
I read this with the incomparably insightful Violeta and Charles, and adored our exchange. Here is Violeta's review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Charles' to come...
December 11, 2020
Forth Spark novel in just a matter of a few weeks, and any concerns that I might start to tire of reading her were quickly evaporated once I got stuck into Loitering with Intent - which I'd put right up there with her best work. Once again, Spark draws heavily on her experiences as a financially struggling young woman in postwar London. There is little, if anything, that I can think of when it comes to flaws here. It is, for me, very very close to being perfect when it comes to novels of this length.
I knew there was a good chance I was going to love this the second that the protagonist, Fleur Talbot, got to drink dry sherry at a job interview.
I mean, could you imagine that now?
"Can I get you a tea or coffee?"
"No thanks, but I wouldn't say no to a sherry"
Bang goes that job!
Like a few others I've read recently, it's some of the supporting characters that left there mark on me just as much, or even more so, as the close to being penniless writer and novelist Miss Talbot. Like Slender Means Selina Redwood and those legs, or Miss Elsie Forrest from The Bachelors, this time around it was the batty 90-year-old Lady Edwina - mother of the snobbish, sinister and manipulating Sir Quentin - with her green teeth and dark red painted fingernails that curled over the tips like talons that made this such a pleasure to read.
When Fleur - who is living on the grimy fringes of the literary world renting a drab bed-sitting room from a landlord who is a bit of a swine - takes a position as secretary to the Autobiographical Association - a miserable gathering of upper-class numpties headed by Sir Quentin Oliver whose memoirs are to be locked away for 70 years so that they can't do any harm to the living persons mentioned within - I thought this would be the main focus of the story. But it's only really a subplot. Fleur's obsession and growing love affair with her own novel - Warrender Chase, is really where the heart of the novel lies, and how fiction and reality strangely start to show signs of copying each other. Here though, it isn't a case of life imitating art, but rather Spark making art the cause of life. After Fleur's Warrender Chase typescript is stolen due to her being accused of libel and malice our heroine sets out a plan to recover her work, whilst also exposing Sir Quentin for what he really is - with a little help from his caked in makeup mother.
There is something wiser and more mature in Loitering with Intent than some of her others, and that comes as no surprise seeing as she was 64 at the time - more than twenty years after the likes of The Bachelors. Yes, she is playful, witty and mischievous here as always, but there is a deeper more devastating feel to this, even though it might not seem so at first. Some of the more humorous scenes featured the likes of Fleur's friend Dottie - the wife of Fleur's lover, Leslie, but most of all for the croaking obscenities of Lady Edwina, who I now won't forget, even though her time in the novel was limited.
Looking at what I've now read of Spark's novels, I'd be surprised if the others I haven't yet read can better this or The Girls of Slender Means (still my fave) but will shall see. One more novel to go before I put the brakes on. I'll likely have another binge on her next year. She is most definitely binge worthy. A bloody marvel I'd say!
November 13, 2023
Wait for it. . .
Wait for it. . .
Wait for it. . .
Man, I feel like Neil Diamond over here, singing:
She got the way to move me
Cherry
(She got the way to groove me)
(She got the way to groove me)
Cherry, baby
She got the way to move me
(She got the way to groove me)
All right
Who knew that Shirley Jackson had a weird, twisted sister born in Scotland, just two years after her??
I didn't.
But I do now.
It seemed that as she was being overlooked as a woman she was determined to behave as a man.
Wait for it. . .
Wait for it. . .
Man, I feel like Neil Diamond over here, singing:
She got the way to move me
Cherry
(She got the way to groove me)
(She got the way to groove me)
Cherry, baby
She got the way to move me
(She got the way to groove me)
All right
Who knew that Shirley Jackson had a weird, twisted sister born in Scotland, just two years after her??
I didn't.
But I do now.
It seemed that as she was being overlooked as a woman she was determined to behave as a man.
November 9, 2023
This review would like to begin with the first sentence of the book it reviews:
One day in the middle of the twentieth century I sat in an old graveyard which had not yet been demolished, in the Kensington area of London, when a young policeman stepped off the path and came over to me.
Cut.
Intriguing image, isn’t it? If it were the opening scene of a movie what kind of movie would that be? Drama or comedy? Action or romance? One third in, it became obvious to me that this book is a 1930s Hollywood screwball comedy. (Think Cary Grand and Katharine Hepburn with the emphasis on the female lead, Cary taking bit parts here and there.)
Here's a description of the genre: “Screwball comedies were characterized by social satire, comedic relief through zany, fast-paced & unusual events, sarcasm, screwy plot twists or identity reversals, and precisely-timed, fast-paced verbal dueling & witty sarcastic dialogue – blending the wacky with the sophisticated.”
Down to the last word, this could be the description of Spark’s book and save me the trouble of further analyzing it. But no: this is the literary equivalent of a 1930s Hollywood screwball comedy and that makes a whole lot of difference…
…because a little further in, it was also obvious that this novel is notreally only about the would-be novelist Fleur Talbot, who in the middle of the 20th century found herself sitting in that old Kensington graveyard - and went on from there to work as secretary of the Autobiographical Association, a group of eccentric egomaniacs intent on writing their memoirs. It is not about the mysterious disappearance (and consecutive wild chase) of the manuscript of her first novel which, although written well before her acquaintance with the pompous director of the club, features a manipulative protagonist whose methods very much resemble those of the ‘real’ man.
Real?? But aren’t they both figments of the author’s imagination? Isn’t even said author a figment of Spark’s imagination? So, how many realities exist in this book? In fact, how many books exist in this book?
These are all valid questions, but they are not going to be answered here because half the fun of this story is its unpredictability. The other half lies in its author’s incredible sense of humor, intelligence and sheer joy of finding…
“…how wonderful it feels to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century.” This statement, along with numerous other aphorisms and musings on fiction and authors and their creative process, is no coincidence in a book as carefully structured as this one. It’s no coincidence either that the author brazenly declares her “…enjoyment of her own voice as she works” every chance she gets.
The fact that this was a buddy read with Charles and Jennifer made it even more enjoyable to follow the intricacies of the author’s mind. Early on we started wondering if we were dealing with an unreliable narrator. By the end it didn’t really matter. What mattered was observing a brilliant literary mind becoming the indisputable master of her oeuvre. Ultimately, what matters is to be able to tell your version of your own story as best you can.
With this book Muriel Sparks did just that.
One day in the middle of the twentieth century I sat in an old graveyard which had not yet been demolished, in the Kensington area of London, when a young policeman stepped off the path and came over to me.
Cut.
Intriguing image, isn’t it? If it were the opening scene of a movie what kind of movie would that be? Drama or comedy? Action or romance? One third in, it became obvious to me that this book is a 1930s Hollywood screwball comedy. (Think Cary Grand and Katharine Hepburn with the emphasis on the female lead, Cary taking bit parts here and there.)
Here's a description of the genre: “Screwball comedies were characterized by social satire, comedic relief through zany, fast-paced & unusual events, sarcasm, screwy plot twists or identity reversals, and precisely-timed, fast-paced verbal dueling & witty sarcastic dialogue – blending the wacky with the sophisticated.”
Down to the last word, this could be the description of Spark’s book and save me the trouble of further analyzing it. But no: this is the literary equivalent of a 1930s Hollywood screwball comedy and that makes a whole lot of difference…
…because a little further in, it was also obvious that this novel is not
Real?? But aren’t they both figments of the author’s imagination? Isn’t even said author a figment of Spark’s imagination? So, how many realities exist in this book? In fact, how many books exist in this book?
These are all valid questions, but they are not going to be answered here because half the fun of this story is its unpredictability. The other half lies in its author’s incredible sense of humor, intelligence and sheer joy of finding…
“…how wonderful it feels to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century.” This statement, along with numerous other aphorisms and musings on fiction and authors and their creative process, is no coincidence in a book as carefully structured as this one. It’s no coincidence either that the author brazenly declares her “…enjoyment of her own voice as she works” every chance she gets.
The fact that this was a buddy read with Charles and Jennifer made it even more enjoyable to follow the intricacies of the author’s mind. Early on we started wondering if we were dealing with an unreliable narrator. By the end it didn’t really matter. What mattered was observing a brilliant literary mind becoming the indisputable master of her oeuvre. Ultimately, what matters is to be able to tell your version of your own story as best you can.
With this book Muriel Sparks did just that.
April 2, 2024
I have to give Muriel Spark credit- she can certainly write humorous books. She can poke fun at the art of writing and publishing, like no other author that I have read.
We meet Fleur Talbot, an author who has just written her first book, Warrender Chase. Fleur “loiters with intent” throughout this book. She listens in on conversations, and notes people’s mannerisms. She is always observing and using these observations in her book. When she takes a job working for Sir Quentin Oliver, the director of the Autobiographical Association, her life becomes one big escapade.
This book is witty, it is satirical, it is actually bonkers at times. It really is a whole lot of fun.
Published: 1981
We meet Fleur Talbot, an author who has just written her first book, Warrender Chase. Fleur “loiters with intent” throughout this book. She listens in on conversations, and notes people’s mannerisms. She is always observing and using these observations in her book. When she takes a job working for Sir Quentin Oliver, the director of the Autobiographical Association, her life becomes one big escapade.
This book is witty, it is satirical, it is actually bonkers at times. It really is a whole lot of fun.
Published: 1981
May 15, 2024
Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark was a bit of a disappointment.
It’s post-war London and Fleur Talbot is writing a book called Warrender Chase. She also takes on a job for a dislikable high society Muppet called Sir Quentin Oliver. This man has created a group called the Autobiographical Association. This group consists of a bunch odd-bods who are writing their memoirs and Fleur has been brought in to assist with this process – enhance them if you like.
As this project develops we see an amalgam developing between the memoirs, Fleur’s book and real-life. I thought that bit was clever. So, it all becomes a bit strange.
The characters here are an interesting bunch, the most developed being Sir (sorry, as an Australian Republican– in the sense of ‘anti-monarchist’, even writing Royal titles makes me come out in hives) Quentin and Fleur, the latter being likable (and perhaps Edwina, Sir Quentin's mummy). But the other characters – who were interesting/odd could have been developed a little more, with one or two exceptions. For example, most members of the AA were like cardboard cut-outs. But who am I to criticise Spark?
There were some humorous moments, more smirk worthy, than laugh worthy, and the novel did start off with some promise. But it all got a bit too silly, farcical and Spark must’ve had the kettle on as it all ended in a hurry.
“Hurry!!!!”
After reading this book and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I am certainly missing Spark’s point. I need to read more of her because I hate missing out – if it's fun, funny, well-written – I WANT IN!!!! So, I’m currently outside the tent pissing in, rather than inside the tent pissing out.
Not where I want to be.
I’d like to thank my super buddy reader Lisa (and Violeta who watched over us and supplied some great comments at the end) – they made this ordinary experience a bit more fun. Lisa and I have committed to read another Spark novel in the near future, I think she enjoyed this a little more than I did, but we both have some work to do on this popular and obviously excellent author (I hope you don’t mind me saying that our Lisa?).
Anyway, onwards, and upwards.
2 Stars
It’s post-war London and Fleur Talbot is writing a book called Warrender Chase. She also takes on a job for a dislikable high society Muppet called Sir Quentin Oliver. This man has created a group called the Autobiographical Association. This group consists of a bunch odd-bods who are writing their memoirs and Fleur has been brought in to assist with this process – enhance them if you like.
As this project develops we see an amalgam developing between the memoirs, Fleur’s book and real-life. I thought that bit was clever. So, it all becomes a bit strange.
The characters here are an interesting bunch, the most developed being Sir (sorry, as an Australian Republican– in the sense of ‘anti-monarchist’, even writing Royal titles makes me come out in hives) Quentin and Fleur, the latter being likable (and perhaps Edwina, Sir Quentin's mummy). But the other characters – who were interesting/odd could have been developed a little more, with one or two exceptions. For example, most members of the AA were like cardboard cut-outs. But who am I to criticise Spark?
There were some humorous moments, more smirk worthy, than laugh worthy, and the novel did start off with some promise. But it all got a bit too silly, farcical and Spark must’ve had the kettle on as it all ended in a hurry.
“Hurry!!!!”
After reading this book and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I am certainly missing Spark’s point. I need to read more of her because I hate missing out – if it's fun, funny, well-written – I WANT IN!!!! So, I’m currently outside the tent pissing in, rather than inside the tent pissing out.
Not where I want to be.
I’d like to thank my super buddy reader Lisa (and Violeta who watched over us and supplied some great comments at the end) – they made this ordinary experience a bit more fun. Lisa and I have committed to read another Spark novel in the near future, I think she enjoyed this a little more than I did, but we both have some work to do on this popular and obviously excellent author (I hope you don’t mind me saying that our Lisa?).
Anyway, onwards, and upwards.
2 Stars
April 25, 2025
Loitering with Intent is ridiculously Spark-ly. It Spark-les with humour and wit throughout, BUT, it also has this undercurrent of Snark. Is the writer of this gem Muriel Spark or Muriel Snark, I'd like to know??!
It's a serious entertainment. Meaning, there are laughs to have on every page, with the silliest of characters and situations and observations, and it plays with the concept of art imitating life or life imitating art, but underneath it all runs this current of truth, of serious things to do with being a writer and the farcical reality of the literary world. And that, friends, is a brilliant, deadly combination.
Not too long ago, I had a book published, and while I was very fortunate in many ways, I also had the full three-ring circus where that's concerned. So I absolutely adored seeing the circus, complete with terrifying clowns, dancing bears, a contortionist, and a daring woman on the trapeze -- described in the incomparable, eccentric hilarity that only Muriel Sp/Sn-ark can do.
What I love best is that this tale is told by a completely empowered, completely joyful artist. An artist who declares at the beginning of what will be a long and successful career: "How wonderful to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century."
It's a serious entertainment. Meaning, there are laughs to have on every page, with the silliest of characters and situations and observations, and it plays with the concept of art imitating life or life imitating art, but underneath it all runs this current of truth, of serious things to do with being a writer and the farcical reality of the literary world. And that, friends, is a brilliant, deadly combination.
Not too long ago, I had a book published, and while I was very fortunate in many ways, I also had the full three-ring circus where that's concerned. So I absolutely adored seeing the circus, complete with terrifying clowns, dancing bears, a contortionist, and a daring woman on the trapeze -- described in the incomparable, eccentric hilarity that only Muriel Sp/Sn-ark can do.
What I love best is that this tale is told by a completely empowered, completely joyful artist. An artist who declares at the beginning of what will be a long and successful career: "How wonderful to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century."
February 3, 2021
Muriel Spark is best enjoyed with a pot of tea and perhaps a biscuit or two. Her books are witty, civilized, and sharp. Not life-changing, exactly, but a pleasant enough way to spend a few hours.
Novelist Fleur Talbot looks back on her early years, particularly when she was working on her first novel, Warrender Chase. During that earlier time, she takes a job working for the Autobiographical Association, which gets people to write their memoirs for safe-keeping. Fleur, ever the writer, uses artistic license to make the people’s lives more interesting – i.e., filled with salacious details.
But soon, strange things start occurring. Snatches of prose from her own novel start popping up in the memoirs. Then events that happen to her book’s characters start happening to these real people. What’s going on? Is she going mad? Is this a conspiracy? Is the mysterious head of the Autobiographical Association, a Sir Quentin Oliver, at the root of it all?
Spark offers up a bit of mystery, the hint of criminality and even some (rather tepid) sex. Comic caricatures are her forte: the eccentric memoirists are lightly, but effectively etched. The most memorable character is Sir Quentin's delightfully outspoken mother, Edwina.
I’m just not sure I get the point of the book. Literary farce? Meditation on truth and art? There are many passages about the writings of Cardinal Newman and Benevuto Cellini, all of which seem to have significance, but I didn’t grasp them.
Furthermore, Warrender Chase, Fleur’s novel, never came together in my mind, so when truth began mirroring her fiction, I just didn’t care.
Still, I have fond memories of Spark’s The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, and I’ve heard some good things about a few of her other books. Plus, her books tend to be quite short, 200 pages or so. I’ll try another one soon.
Novelist Fleur Talbot looks back on her early years, particularly when she was working on her first novel, Warrender Chase. During that earlier time, she takes a job working for the Autobiographical Association, which gets people to write their memoirs for safe-keeping. Fleur, ever the writer, uses artistic license to make the people’s lives more interesting – i.e., filled with salacious details.
But soon, strange things start occurring. Snatches of prose from her own novel start popping up in the memoirs. Then events that happen to her book’s characters start happening to these real people. What’s going on? Is she going mad? Is this a conspiracy? Is the mysterious head of the Autobiographical Association, a Sir Quentin Oliver, at the root of it all?
Spark offers up a bit of mystery, the hint of criminality and even some (rather tepid) sex. Comic caricatures are her forte: the eccentric memoirists are lightly, but effectively etched. The most memorable character is Sir Quentin's delightfully outspoken mother, Edwina.
I’m just not sure I get the point of the book. Literary farce? Meditation on truth and art? There are many passages about the writings of Cardinal Newman and Benevuto Cellini, all of which seem to have significance, but I didn’t grasp them.
Furthermore, Warrender Chase, Fleur’s novel, never came together in my mind, so when truth began mirroring her fiction, I just didn’t care.
Still, I have fond memories of Spark’s The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, and I’ve heard some good things about a few of her other books. Plus, her books tend to be quite short, 200 pages or so. I’ll try another one soon.
November 23, 2018
This was my fifth Spark novel, and perhaps the most entertaining so far. As always her writing is sharp and perceptive, and her characters quirky and interesting. This one centres on Fleur Talbot, an aspiring young writer who must be at least partly based on the young Spark.
The story starts when she gets a job with Sir Quentin Oliver, a minor aristocrat who has conceived an Autobiographical Association, whose members are expected to write candidly about their lives in manuscripts that will be locked away for 70 years, by which time everyone will be safely dead. Fleur works as a secretary-cum-ghost writer, and amuses herself by livening up the dull drafts they have produced. Their meetings take place in Quentin's London flat, which belongs to his eccentric mother, a wonderful creation who sows mischief but is ultimately much more sympathetic than the scheming Sir Quentin.
Fleur is working on her first novel Warrender Chase, and the events at the Autobiographical Association start to resemble her plot, giving the plot a rather clever metafictional element. I won't say too much more about the way it develops - it is only a short book and I would rather encourage you to read it yourself.
The story starts when she gets a job with Sir Quentin Oliver, a minor aristocrat who has conceived an Autobiographical Association, whose members are expected to write candidly about their lives in manuscripts that will be locked away for 70 years, by which time everyone will be safely dead. Fleur works as a secretary-cum-ghost writer, and amuses herself by livening up the dull drafts they have produced. Their meetings take place in Quentin's London flat, which belongs to his eccentric mother, a wonderful creation who sows mischief but is ultimately much more sympathetic than the scheming Sir Quentin.
Fleur is working on her first novel Warrender Chase, and the events at the Autobiographical Association start to resemble her plot, giving the plot a rather clever metafictional element. I won't say too much more about the way it develops - it is only a short book and I would rather encourage you to read it yourself.
May 15, 2024
3.5 Stars, Rounded up for the prose and Edwina
Muriel Spark's Loitering with Intent is a mixed bag for me. Once it dawns on me that this work is a farce, I more easily settle in for the ride.
Fleur, a young aspiring author, takes a day job as secretary to the Autobiographical Society, and mines it for future characterizations. As the tale progresses, her novel and real life seem to merge.
"Presented fictionally, one could have done something authentic with that poor material. But the inducing them to express themselves in life resulted in falsity.
What is truth? I could have realized these people with my fun and games with their life-stories, while Sir Quentin was destroying them with his needling after frankness."
What I think Spark is getting to is the concept that fiction can get to a truth in a way that sometimes non-fiction cannot as easily. An author writing fiction can tweak something in a way to serve her theme and make her point more clearly and emphatically than a non-fiction work can.
What I loved about this book:
Spark's prose is brilliant. Her playful and mischievous style gives a lightness of tone to parts of the story. Spark can also be sharp and cynical in her tone which swiftly changes the mood. She is economical with her use of language; she has the gift of conveying a lot with few words.
The character of Lady Edwina is a new favorite. She is an outrageous, elderly woman whom I cheer for and always puts a smile on my face when she appears.
Spark imaginatively weaves a parallel between Fleur's novel Warrender Chase and Sir Quentin's machinations. She gives me Sir Quentin as the villain of the piece so that I can boo and hiss with enjoyment.
She subtly, and not so subtly, pokes fun of the clinging to social class and pretensions. As an added bonus I learned the word orgulous which means haughty.
What didn't work as well:
I didn't fully understand that this work was a fictionalized memoir until pointed out to me by astute GR reader, Violeta. I feel that I lacked some basic knowledge of Spark going into this read that would have helped me get more enjoyment from the story.
After careening along at a mad pace though the book, I arrive at the last chapter that slows the pace to a halt; and Spark leaves me with a pedestrian ending. Such a disappointment.
Buddy read with Mark.
His review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Publication 1981
Muriel Spark's Loitering with Intent is a mixed bag for me. Once it dawns on me that this work is a farce, I more easily settle in for the ride.
Fleur, a young aspiring author, takes a day job as secretary to the Autobiographical Society, and mines it for future characterizations. As the tale progresses, her novel and real life seem to merge.
"Presented fictionally, one could have done something authentic with that poor material. But the inducing them to express themselves in life resulted in falsity.
What is truth? I could have realized these people with my fun and games with their life-stories, while Sir Quentin was destroying them with his needling after frankness."
What I think Spark is getting to is the concept that fiction can get to a truth in a way that sometimes non-fiction cannot as easily. An author writing fiction can tweak something in a way to serve her theme and make her point more clearly and emphatically than a non-fiction work can.
What I loved about this book:
Spark's prose is brilliant. Her playful and mischievous style gives a lightness of tone to parts of the story. Spark can also be sharp and cynical in her tone which swiftly changes the mood. She is economical with her use of language; she has the gift of conveying a lot with few words.
The character of Lady Edwina is a new favorite. She is an outrageous, elderly woman whom I cheer for and always puts a smile on my face when she appears.
Spark imaginatively weaves a parallel between Fleur's novel Warrender Chase and Sir Quentin's machinations. She gives me Sir Quentin as the villain of the piece so that I can boo and hiss with enjoyment.
She subtly, and not so subtly, pokes fun of the clinging to social class and pretensions. As an added bonus I learned the word orgulous which means haughty.
What didn't work as well:
I didn't fully understand that this work was a fictionalized memoir until pointed out to me by astute GR reader, Violeta. I feel that I lacked some basic knowledge of Spark going into this read that would have helped me get more enjoyment from the story.
After careening along at a mad pace though the book, I arrive at the last chapter that slows the pace to a halt; and Spark leaves me with a pedestrian ending. Such a disappointment.
Buddy read with Mark.
His review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Publication 1981
June 11, 2022
I
NEVER
thought I could pick one favorite author. Is Muriel Spark this for me? Maybe.
I have not come far in the book, but I am totally loving it. It is Spark's lines that I absolutely love. They are witty. They are intelligent. They make you laugh and they make you think.
At this point, wherever the plot may lead it just does not matter.
Spark humorously and wisely speaks about the art of writing.
I am regretting only that this piece is so short. I see now that I have already done half!
To top it all off, the audiobook is narrated by the talented Nadia May, that is to say Wanda McCaddon! The narration is utterly superb.
I had to immediately share my enjoyment, even if I am not yet done.
*************
Well now it is over. I just wish it had been longer. No, actually I would not change it a bit. I loved it from start to finish. It is funny, it is witty, it is wise. It is not only about the art of writing; it’s about getting your book published too. The plot is perfectly constructed. This is a mystery and there are deaths. Fleur Talbot, the author in the story tells of what happens to her between the autumn of 1949 and the summer of 1950. The setting is London; each historical detail is perfect. I love the characters, particularly Fleur and Edwina. The story is so darn clever.
The lines, the lines - they are simply fantastic! The message, the plot and the characters too.
This is my absolute favorite by Muriel Spark. These, in order of preference, are the ones I have read:
*Loitering with Intent 5 stars
*A Far Cry from Kensington 5 stars
*The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 3 stars
*The Girls of Slender Means 3 stars
*Memento Mori 3 stars
*The Bachelors 3 stars
Remember, a three star book is a book I like. It is impossible to judge from the book descriptions which one YOU will like best. I will read everything I can by this author.
I have not come far in the book, but I am totally loving it. It is Spark's lines that I absolutely love. They are witty. They are intelligent. They make you laugh and they make you think.
At this point, wherever the plot may lead it just does not matter.
Spark humorously and wisely speaks about the art of writing.
I am regretting only that this piece is so short. I see now that I have already done half!
To top it all off, the audiobook is narrated by the talented Nadia May, that is to say Wanda McCaddon! The narration is utterly superb.
I had to immediately share my enjoyment, even if I am not yet done.
*************
Well now it is over. I just wish it had been longer. No, actually I would not change it a bit. I loved it from start to finish. It is funny, it is witty, it is wise. It is not only about the art of writing; it’s about getting your book published too. The plot is perfectly constructed. This is a mystery and there are deaths. Fleur Talbot, the author in the story tells of what happens to her between the autumn of 1949 and the summer of 1950. The setting is London; each historical detail is perfect. I love the characters, particularly Fleur and Edwina. The story is so darn clever.
The lines, the lines - they are simply fantastic! The message, the plot and the characters too.
This is my absolute favorite by Muriel Spark. These, in order of preference, are the ones I have read:
*Loitering with Intent 5 stars
*A Far Cry from Kensington 5 stars
*The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 3 stars
*The Girls of Slender Means 3 stars
*Memento Mori 3 stars
*The Bachelors 3 stars
Remember, a three star book is a book I like. It is impossible to judge from the book descriptions which one YOU will like best. I will read everything I can by this author.
July 29, 2021
The human condition looked upon with a jaundiced eye. A bit of cruelty liberally laced with humor. The strength of pen and ink. Insisting upon complete frankness may sound refreshing, but it may not be all it is cracked up to be. Fact morphing into fiction, or is it the other way around? Loitering with intent just might pay off in the end.
Muriel Spark has a way with her characters. She likes to tweak them and does so unmercifully. Good stuff, always a little different.
Muriel Spark has a way with her characters. She likes to tweak them and does so unmercifully. Good stuff, always a little different.
November 13, 2022
Another dry and acerbic novel from Spark. It was nominated for the 1981 Booker Prize, the year Midnight’s Children won. It is set in 1949/1950 and concerns Fleur Talbot, a writer struggling to complete her first novel and get it published. She takes a job as a secretary to Sir Quentin Oliver and his Autobiographical Association. It is an odd grouping who are attempting to write their memoirs. Fleur’s novel Warrender Chase begins to reflect what is happening in the association and this being Spark there is a lot of fun with the interplay between the texts and also two other autobiographies; Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua and Cellini’s autobiography. Fact and fiction are wound together.
It’s an odd mix. There is an Ealing comedy/melodrama feel about it and one wouldn’t be surprised to find Alistair Sim or Alec Guinness wandering through the pages. There are also sorts of other references. A nod to A Room of One’s Own and Woolf. Hints of Blake, Spark’s usual irritation with the nature of family, some interesting juxtapositions in terms of friendships:
“I don’t know why I thought of Dottie as my friend but I did. I believe she thought the same way about me although she really didn’t like me. In those days, among the people I mixed with, one had friends almost by predestination. There they were, like your winter coat and your meagre luggage. You didn’t think of discarding them just because you didn’t altogether like them.”
and a strong female protagonist, one who embraces everything life (and men) throw at her and is not bowed down. As Spark says:
"The true novelist, one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art resides in the endless different ways of telling a story"
The mirroring of Fleur’s employer and the main character in her novel (Warrender Chase) is handled well and is quite amusing:
“In my febrile state of creativity, I saw before my eyes how Sir Quentin was revealing himself chapter by chapter to be a type and consummation of Warrender Chase, my character. I could see that the members of the Autobiographical Association were about to become his victims, psychological Jack the Ripper as he was.”
The portrayal of Bohemian life is effective and funny and there is an element of farce in relation to the manuscript of Fleur’s novel. As always Spark poses lots of questions and the satire is effective. Incidentally the trio of siblings at the Triad Press represent the Sitwells. It’s also brief, a good read.
It’s an odd mix. There is an Ealing comedy/melodrama feel about it and one wouldn’t be surprised to find Alistair Sim or Alec Guinness wandering through the pages. There are also sorts of other references. A nod to A Room of One’s Own and Woolf. Hints of Blake, Spark’s usual irritation with the nature of family, some interesting juxtapositions in terms of friendships:
“I don’t know why I thought of Dottie as my friend but I did. I believe she thought the same way about me although she really didn’t like me. In those days, among the people I mixed with, one had friends almost by predestination. There they were, like your winter coat and your meagre luggage. You didn’t think of discarding them just because you didn’t altogether like them.”
and a strong female protagonist, one who embraces everything life (and men) throw at her and is not bowed down. As Spark says:
"The true novelist, one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art resides in the endless different ways of telling a story"
The mirroring of Fleur’s employer and the main character in her novel (Warrender Chase) is handled well and is quite amusing:
“In my febrile state of creativity, I saw before my eyes how Sir Quentin was revealing himself chapter by chapter to be a type and consummation of Warrender Chase, my character. I could see that the members of the Autobiographical Association were about to become his victims, psychological Jack the Ripper as he was.”
The portrayal of Bohemian life is effective and funny and there is an element of farce in relation to the manuscript of Fleur’s novel. As always Spark poses lots of questions and the satire is effective. Incidentally the trio of siblings at the Triad Press represent the Sitwells. It’s also brief, a good read.
July 6, 2021
When it comes to reading, I have a plan. I always know what my next book is, and I can usually tell you what the next ten will be, just not the exact order. To a significant degree I even know what I am going to read for the next 12 months. But I can flex too. Sometimes a book grabs my attention and I change my plans. And sometimes this Goodreads thing really works: I see several of my Goodreads friends are saying very positive things about Muriel Spark and I decide to follow their lead. And that is how I came to Loitering with Intent, which is such a great title and so apt.
For being such a short novel, barely over 200 pages, Loitering with Intent was a complete meal. The voice of Fleur Talbot, the narrator and protagonist of the novel, is still vibrant inside my head. She is a young author, having written her first novel, Warrender Chase, and trying to get it published while working diligently on her second. Until success comes her way, she must take various jobs to pay for the necessities while she continues to write. At the start of the novel she is looking for that next paycheck, interviews with Sir Quentin Oliver and takes a secretarial position at The Autobiographical Society. It is so easy to imagine the different characters you meet in the novel, including Lady Edwina, Beryl Tims and Dottie. They are who you would expect for that character, but with such vitality and color, you feel you just met them on the street.
The complexities of the novel are surprising. Fleur Talbot is so passionate about her craft that you think perhaps she is just a reflection of the author herself, but Fleur is in her 20’s and the author was 64 when this novel was published. The novel written about a character/author who is writing a novel, but then that author’s novel becomes an integral part of the story itself. Fleur is no passive personality; she is not going to let someone take advantage without consequences. She is to her novel as mama bear is to her cub. The twists and turns are delightful. As with any great read, it felt too short when it was over.
For being such a short novel, barely over 200 pages, Loitering with Intent was a complete meal. The voice of Fleur Talbot, the narrator and protagonist of the novel, is still vibrant inside my head. She is a young author, having written her first novel, Warrender Chase, and trying to get it published while working diligently on her second. Until success comes her way, she must take various jobs to pay for the necessities while she continues to write. At the start of the novel she is looking for that next paycheck, interviews with Sir Quentin Oliver and takes a secretarial position at The Autobiographical Society. It is so easy to imagine the different characters you meet in the novel, including Lady Edwina, Beryl Tims and Dottie. They are who you would expect for that character, but with such vitality and color, you feel you just met them on the street.
The complexities of the novel are surprising. Fleur Talbot is so passionate about her craft that you think perhaps she is just a reflection of the author herself, but Fleur is in her 20’s and the author was 64 when this novel was published. The novel written about a character/author who is writing a novel, but then that author’s novel becomes an integral part of the story itself. Fleur is no passive personality; she is not going to let someone take advantage without consequences. She is to her novel as mama bear is to her cub. The twists and turns are delightful. As with any great read, it felt too short when it was over.
August 31, 2023
In Oscar Wilde’s famed essay in a dialogue form, “The Decay of Lying”, Cyril asks Vivian But you don’t mean to say that you seriously believe that Life imitates Art, that Life in fact is the mirror, and Art the reality? Vivian: Certainly I do.
In this page-turning and yet-not-slight novel, Spark puts her own intelligent stamp on Vivian’s response, which is more complicated than simply affirmative. In a series of turns of events, often hilariously absurd and still believable, with dozens of lucidly created characters, life and art/fiction intermingle, as do human folly, cruelty, rectitude and kindness, all of it. It’s a joy to read it in Spark’s eccentrically charming style, with her clever observations about the unexpected turns and paradoxes in human life (“I do dearly love a turn of events”, “Contradictions in human character are one of its most consistent notes”, …) and inventive ways to construct a short novel with many plots, leaving no loose ends.
The novel’s heroine/narrator Fleur, who was a writer (like her creator), said it best:
In this page-turning and yet-not-slight novel, Spark puts her own intelligent stamp on Vivian’s response, which is more complicated than simply affirmative. In a series of turns of events, often hilariously absurd and still believable, with dozens of lucidly created characters, life and art/fiction intermingle, as do human folly, cruelty, rectitude and kindness, all of it. It’s a joy to read it in Spark’s eccentrically charming style, with her clever observations about the unexpected turns and paradoxes in human life (“I do dearly love a turn of events”, “Contradictions in human character are one of its most consistent notes”, …) and inventive ways to construct a short novel with many plots, leaving no loose ends.
The novel’s heroine/narrator Fleur, who was a writer (like her creator), said it best:
The true novelist, one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art resides in the endless different ways of telling a story, and the methods are mythological by nature.”And Fleur also said this:
Solly had found me another publisher to replace the one whose contract he had so despised. This publisher, an elderly man, was called Revisson Doe. He had a round, bald head of the shiny type I always wanted to stroke if I sat behind it in church or at the theatre.Yup, interchangeably funny, serious, and clever throughout the entire novel. This review prompted me to read it. It’s my second Spark and I am already an enthusiastic fan.
March 5, 2019
I read this book due to its inclusion in the 2019 Mookes Madness tournament.
A book that was shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize - a prize of course won by the Booker of Bookers Midnights Children.
An entertaining and cleverly written book – which I would best categorise as a very deliberate mash up of 1950s farce, and early 1980s meta-fictional conceit.
The book serves as an interesting examination of two related creative processes:
(Auto)biography and memior – with Spark simultaneously (among many other ideas): having characters who whose whole connection is their interest in writing their own memoirs; examining in detail two autobiographies – Benvenuto Cellini’s “The Life of Benvenuto Cellini” and Henry Newman’s “Apologia” as well as alluding to Proust; looking at the idea of ghostwritten autobiographies; examining the importance of the mass-autobiographical Who’s Who in determining so much of English culture and class hierarchy for much of the 20th Century
(Auto) fiction – of course something which is more topical now than when this was written (given a year in which Cusk/Knausgaard finished their series); Spark examines the flow of a novel – what it means for a novel to draw from real life, how that very act of writing what one observes can impact on the attitudes of those around the writer, what we mean by the concept of art imitating life and, more to the point, when we say that life seems to be imitating art or for art to turn out to be foreshadowing the future (again something which can seem more topical than ever in an age of Trump/Brexit).
A final comment – the version I read has a really excellent introduction from Mark Lawson and a very bizarre orange, cartoon cover.
A book that was shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize - a prize of course won by the Booker of Bookers Midnights Children.
An entertaining and cleverly written book – which I would best categorise as a very deliberate mash up of 1950s farce, and early 1980s meta-fictional conceit.
The book serves as an interesting examination of two related creative processes:
(Auto)biography and memior – with Spark simultaneously (among many other ideas): having characters who whose whole connection is their interest in writing their own memoirs; examining in detail two autobiographies – Benvenuto Cellini’s “The Life of Benvenuto Cellini” and Henry Newman’s “Apologia” as well as alluding to Proust; looking at the idea of ghostwritten autobiographies; examining the importance of the mass-autobiographical Who’s Who in determining so much of English culture and class hierarchy for much of the 20th Century
(Auto) fiction – of course something which is more topical now than when this was written (given a year in which Cusk/Knausgaard finished their series); Spark examines the flow of a novel – what it means for a novel to draw from real life, how that very act of writing what one observes can impact on the attitudes of those around the writer, what we mean by the concept of art imitating life and, more to the point, when we say that life seems to be imitating art or for art to turn out to be foreshadowing the future (again something which can seem more topical than ever in an age of Trump/Brexit).
A final comment – the version I read has a really excellent introduction from Mark Lawson and a very bizarre orange, cartoon cover.
May 16, 2024
I’ve read that despite all the acclaim her books garnered, Muriel Spark was not considered a “great” author because she never dealt with families. No intimate portraits of family relationships or multi-generational sagas for her. Her protagonists, always women, exist either completely outside or on the periphery of domestic arrangements.
(That’s a curious comment in one way, because I’ve also read that the Booker always goes to books that have social or political content, not to ones that are solely personal or familial. Go figure.)
Regardless of whether that’s true, Spark’s unrooted, difficult, women are endlessly fascinating to me. As is this book, on its most straightforward level the portrait of a young woman attempting to complete her first novel while living in a tiny bed-sit in London in 1949-1950, but also a deliciously sly commentary on the creative process. Spark takes pains to leave it unclear as the plot develops whether art is imitating life or the reverse.
When she was asked to verify that the book was autobiographical, Spark, always so precise with words, said “No, because these things did not happen to me.” Things like these, yes. But not these specific things. A crafty comment, since the manipulation of “autobiographical” material is at the core of the plot. As well as the theft of ideas and physical documents.
Well, that’s typical Spark, isn’t it - crafty. Although I read many of her books decades ago, I’m enjoying revisiting them and hopefully, making my way through them all.
(That’s a curious comment in one way, because I’ve also read that the Booker always goes to books that have social or political content, not to ones that are solely personal or familial. Go figure.)
Regardless of whether that’s true, Spark’s unrooted, difficult, women are endlessly fascinating to me. As is this book, on its most straightforward level the portrait of a young woman attempting to complete her first novel while living in a tiny bed-sit in London in 1949-1950, but also a deliciously sly commentary on the creative process. Spark takes pains to leave it unclear as the plot develops whether art is imitating life or the reverse.
When she was asked to verify that the book was autobiographical, Spark, always so precise with words, said “No, because these things did not happen to me.” Things like these, yes. But not these specific things. A crafty comment, since the manipulation of “autobiographical” material is at the core of the plot. As well as the theft of ideas and physical documents.
Well, that’s typical Spark, isn’t it - crafty. Although I read many of her books decades ago, I’m enjoying revisiting them and hopefully, making my way through them all.
August 17, 2017
دوستانِ گرانقدر، این کتاب، نه داستان مشخص و گیرایی دارد و نه ترجمهٔ خوب و مناسبی دارد
ترجمه سرشار از واژه های ِ عربی و جمله بندی های نادرست و نامفهوم است
این به اصطلاح داستان از زبانِ زنی به نامِ <فلور تالبوت> روایت میشود و به اصطلاح خاطرات او میباشد
دختری دوره های منشیگری را گذرانده و به دنبالِ کار میگردد و مجردی زندگی میکند و از صاحب خانهٔ خود ناراضی است
فلور نامه ای از دوستی دریافت میکند که به او پیشنهاد کار داده است و او را معرفی میکند تا در جایی برای کارفرمایِ خود یعنی آقای الیور کار کند و پس از توضیحاتِ خسته کننده از صحبتهای رد و بدل شده با آقای الیور و توصیفِ شخصیت او و اطرافِ او.. به سراغ توضیحات کسالت آور از خانمِ تایمز میرود و این توضیحاتِ خسته کننده از اشخاص و محیط اطراف ادامه دارد
به نظرم نویسندهٔ این کتاب سعی دارد تا از نویسندهٔ نامی <گوستاو فلوبر> و سبکِ او یعنی "فلانور" پیروی کند.. امّا حتی ذره ای هم نتوانسته این را به درستی انجام دهد.. فکر میکنم انتخاب نامِ <فلور> برای شخصیت اصلی داستان و یا همان راویِ داستان، برای نزدیک شدن به نامِ <فلوبر>باشد
البته اینها همهٔ حدس هایی است که میزنم و اثباتِ آن زمان زیادی نیاز دارد که در حوصلهٔ این ریویو نمیگنجد
درکل کتاب خوب و مناسبی نمیباشد و تنها وقت به هدر دادن است و بَس
-----------------------------------------
امیدوارم این ریویو برای شما فرزندانِ اهلِ ادب و کتابخوان، مفید بوده باشه
<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>
ترجمه سرشار از واژه های ِ عربی و جمله بندی های نادرست و نامفهوم است
این به اصطلاح داستان از زبانِ زنی به نامِ <فلور تالبوت> روایت میشود و به اصطلاح خاطرات او میباشد
دختری دوره های منشیگری را گذرانده و به دنبالِ کار میگردد و مجردی زندگی میکند و از صاحب خانهٔ خود ناراضی است
فلور نامه ای از دوستی دریافت میکند که به او پیشنهاد کار داده است و او را معرفی میکند تا در جایی برای کارفرمایِ خود یعنی آقای الیور کار کند و پس از توضیحاتِ خسته کننده از صحبتهای رد و بدل شده با آقای الیور و توصیفِ شخصیت او و اطرافِ او.. به سراغ توضیحات کسالت آور از خانمِ تایمز میرود و این توضیحاتِ خسته کننده از اشخاص و محیط اطراف ادامه دارد
به نظرم نویسندهٔ این کتاب سعی دارد تا از نویسندهٔ نامی <گوستاو فلوبر> و سبکِ او یعنی "فلانور" پیروی کند.. امّا حتی ذره ای هم نتوانسته این را به درستی انجام دهد.. فکر میکنم انتخاب نامِ <فلور> برای شخصیت اصلی داستان و یا همان راویِ داستان، برای نزدیک شدن به نامِ <فلوبر>باشد
البته اینها همهٔ حدس هایی است که میزنم و اثباتِ آن زمان زیادی نیاز دارد که در حوصلهٔ این ریویو نمیگنجد
درکل کتاب خوب و مناسبی نمیباشد و تنها وقت به هدر دادن است و بَس
-----------------------------------------
امیدوارم این ریویو برای شما فرزندانِ اهلِ ادب و کتابخوان، مفید بوده باشه
<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>
March 30, 2025
If you have ever had the experience of instant attraction to a book's main character (esp. a narrator, which it is in this case) and have been held in his / her grip blissfully to the end, then you'll know why I loved 'Loitering with Intent' from beginning and onward through.
Fleur Talbot captured me with her first line:
~ which, to a large degree, it is. But it's more. For something generally lighthearted (in a slightly dark way), 'LWI' progressively becomes an unlikely story of suspense. ~ not in the sense that crime is involved (necessarily) but Fleur will find herself in the employ of someone whose motives are suspect.
Fleur is a novelist. Early on, she mentions casually that this story is told in retrospect. She is looking back on the circumstances that surrounded - as opposed to inspired - her first novel. What we slowly come to understand is that, with her first book, Fleur (a struggling artist, of course) wasn't creatively filtering certain life events. Quite the opposite. Unbeknownst to Fleur, her virgin effort was quietly revealing itself to be psychic. ~ which, in large part, leads to concerted efforts in thwarting the novel's publication.
It's a rare thing when an impending first novel causes such cat-and-mouse chicanery. But Fleur is in with not only a cagey 'cat' but a collection of malleable 'mice'.
Writers can be very boring as main or significant characters in a story. They often come off like passive (and often preternaturally sensitive) 'sponges', subservient to incidents that happen to or around them. They can have a 'tabula rasa' aura suggesting everything from innocence to nonentity.
Not Fleur. She may be the most fascinating writer-character I've ever read. She's certainly a proactive one. Though she may at times read as 'calculating', that would be to misunderstand her. Fleur has the instincts of someone who knows she is more or less alone in the world and can ultimately only depend on herself, esp. when she's most vulnerable. She spends this entire novel being vulnerable... until she no longer is.
Along the way, she is also hilarious. For example, when dealing with the very weird wife of the (oddly bisexual) man she is tired of having an affair with:
Up to now, I've only known of Muriel Spark through the film versions of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' (a brilliant adaptation) and 'The Driver's Seat' (not so brilliant but with camp / cult appeal). I'm thrilled to have met her now on a more intimate level. Reading 'Loitering with Intent' was like having a seat at a riotous banquet. I'm not sure that this short novel would have wide appeal (except maybe among those with a particular literary 'bent') but I was totally seduced, enchanted and transported!
Fleur Talbot captured me with her first line:
One day in the middle of the twentieth century I sat in an old graveyard which had not yet been demolished, in the Kensington area of London, when a young policeman stepped off the path and came over to me.Already there's tension of a sort: Is Fleur in trouble? Has she done something wrong? ~ except she lets us know not only that she's safe~:
He was shy and smiling, he might have been coming over the grass to ask me for a game of tennis.~ but also suggests that the story she's going to tell will be whimsical.
~ which, to a large degree, it is. But it's more. For something generally lighthearted (in a slightly dark way), 'LWI' progressively becomes an unlikely story of suspense. ~ not in the sense that crime is involved (necessarily) but Fleur will find herself in the employ of someone whose motives are suspect.
Fleur is a novelist. Early on, she mentions casually that this story is told in retrospect. She is looking back on the circumstances that surrounded - as opposed to inspired - her first novel. What we slowly come to understand is that, with her first book, Fleur (a struggling artist, of course) wasn't creatively filtering certain life events. Quite the opposite. Unbeknownst to Fleur, her virgin effort was quietly revealing itself to be psychic. ~ which, in large part, leads to concerted efforts in thwarting the novel's publication.
It's a rare thing when an impending first novel causes such cat-and-mouse chicanery. But Fleur is in with not only a cagey 'cat' but a collection of malleable 'mice'.
Writers can be very boring as main or significant characters in a story. They often come off like passive (and often preternaturally sensitive) 'sponges', subservient to incidents that happen to or around them. They can have a 'tabula rasa' aura suggesting everything from innocence to nonentity.
Not Fleur. She may be the most fascinating writer-character I've ever read. She's certainly a proactive one. Though she may at times read as 'calculating', that would be to misunderstand her. Fleur has the instincts of someone who knows she is more or less alone in the world and can ultimately only depend on herself, esp. when she's most vulnerable. She spends this entire novel being vulnerable... until she no longer is.
Along the way, she is also hilarious. For example, when dealing with the very weird wife of the (oddly bisexual) man she is tired of having an affair with:
Dottie was infuriated by my indifference, she desired so much that I should be in love with Leslie and not have him, and she felt I was cheapening her goods.~ or when commenting on others in her midst who also write:
Lady Bernice 'Bucks' Gilbert had effected a flashback to her teens, devoting a long chapter to her lesbian adventure with the captain of the hockey team, to which many descriptions of sunsets in the Cotswold hills lent atmosphere.I'm intentionally avoiding too many specifics of 'LWI''s plot. It seems much too ingenious to risk spoiling.
Up to now, I've only known of Muriel Spark through the film versions of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' (a brilliant adaptation) and 'The Driver's Seat' (not so brilliant but with camp / cult appeal). I'm thrilled to have met her now on a more intimate level. Reading 'Loitering with Intent' was like having a seat at a riotous banquet. I'm not sure that this short novel would have wide appeal (except maybe among those with a particular literary 'bent') but I was totally seduced, enchanted and transported!
July 25, 2015
I think how one feels about this novel is going to depend on how one feels about its narrator, Fleur Talbot. Fleur, an aspiring novelist, is plunked down among a group of odd characters and is clearly meant to be the voice of reason, but she also displays a fair amount of obliviousness to the feelings of others. I found this obliviousness to be one of the main sources of hilarity in the book, but I can certainly see how others might feel differently. Fleur also spends quite a bit of time describing her writing process to the reader, which, again, I thought was quite interesting but which others might find dull or irrelevant. The plot of this book is exceedingly silly but amusing in a low-stakes kind of way. Honestly, this book was different from anything I've ever read before. I'm definitely interested in reading other Muriel Spark books, but it's hard to imagine they'll live up to the madcap antics of this one.
April 20, 2019
[4.5*]
What a delight this book was! Full of wit and musings on writing and writers, with a shrewd no-nonsense heroine, a colorful cast of secondary characters (Edwina is simply marvellous!) and an unexpected and entertaining plot. It is meta on so many levels I wouldn't even know where to begin. And that title! I am absolutely in love with it, both in and of itself and how it relates to the novel.
What a delight this book was! Full of wit and musings on writing and writers, with a shrewd no-nonsense heroine, a colorful cast of secondary characters (Edwina is simply marvellous!) and an unexpected and entertaining plot. It is meta on so many levels I wouldn't even know where to begin. And that title! I am absolutely in love with it, both in and of itself and how it relates to the novel.
January 4, 2021
(4.5) Glorious fun on about a dozen different levels. Plus: Muriel Spark perfectly skewers a certain type of hypocritical, odiously simpering Englander. Great way to start 2021.
November 21, 2018
The premise befits a nice Sunday evening TV drama - London, 1949: a young writer takes a job as secretary to an eccentric association of minor aristocrats working on their autobiographies - but it soon becomes apparent that this is more discomfiting than cosy. This happens with Muriel Spark books: I expect and want them to be cosy, and then they're not.
Fleur, the narrator, is very interesting, as are the varied responses to her in other reviews - among them 'likeable', and 'unreliable' (in the literary sense). She's strangely unsettling, and part of that is that she also isn't as unsettling as you sometimes expect she may become. In the first couple of chapters, I had déjà vu - perhaps I had read a few pages of this standing in a library or bookshop in the 90s - and I kept thinking how, as a teenager, I'd might have taken Fleur's opinions as right all round and to be emulated. Now I could see that she coded, sometimes, as intended to be unlikeable - yet she never actually became nefarious. In the end I concluded she was a type of spiky individual I like and when I meet one, I'm so glad to find someone who agrees with me about xyz and who doesn't fit in in certain ways I recognise, and sometimes tries to play the game, sometimes not. (‘You know,’ Dottie said, ‘there’s something a bit harsh about you, Fleur. You’re not really womanly, are you?’ …To show her I was a woman…) But on the other hand it's probably best that with them I never talk about abc, because we'd definitely disagree, and that I don't confide about anything that sounds a bit soft. She was another of these characters, like Gretel in this year's Booker shortlisted Everything Under, whom I'd perhaps prefer to talk to than read about within the confines of the novel. Fleur seems so real in her unstereotypical personality, which itself has twists and turns compared with most literary characters who seem cardboard cutouts by comparison: sometimes she's kind when you hadn't expected it, and just when you figured she's actually really nice after all, she says something catty. This is how people are in real life, not in books, perhaps especially when young and still figuring things out.
Yet she is also a notably unrealistic device of 1980s metafiction - a loud, raucous context (alongside Martin Amis) in which I never would have thought, of my own accord, to place this tale of more-or-less genteel machinations. (It's only a few open references to bodily fuctions and sex that indicate it wasn't written in the 50s or early 60s; otherwise it feels very much of that era.) Understanding, via the introduction by Mark Lawson, that there are 'autobiographical associations' lurking in the novel made me more interested in Muriel Spark as a person. I've never especially liked Lawson on TV and radio, but here, without his broadcast manner or the glibness of newspaper columns, it became apparent that he has some good insights into literature. There is plenty explained here which I wouldn't have spotted otherwise, as I've only read two or three books of Spark's previously and had read very little about the woman herself. If I'd ever known she was Catholic, I'd forgotten, and because I was used to seeing her defined foremost as a Scottish writer, had no idea that back in the 70s she'd been seen as one among Britain's major Catholic novelists of the 20th century, along with Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Anthony Burgess. (I'd tended to bracket Burgess with Ballard instead, as one with an interest in the shock of the new, whilst Waugh and Greene, it's easier to understand grouped together.) David Lodge, too, is mentioned, for metafiction, though Catholics were also a feature of several of his novels.
I love the book's milieu of shabby-genteel bedsit life and full time work with strange characters, which feels far more realistic than most contemporary books about young writers. Regardless of the non-existence of internet, this is still way realler now than Tao Lin or Sheila Heti. (Where are all the great new novels in which authors house-sit and work in temp admin jobs, and pare down that online grocery order to as little as possible over the minimum £40?) Spark's phrase for these circumstances "on the grubby edge of the literary world" also gives me the pithy description I'd been needing for Vernon Subutex - which I've been reading slowly for the last couple of weeks - vis a vis the music world. Fleur has a tacit self-assurance which is unaffected by the differences in wealth and class she encounters at work; there's no reason to believe she isn't English, but this kind of confident semi-detachment from English social structures strikes me as characteristic of educated Scots people, perhaps especially of an older generation. This attitude, and the setting made me want to love the book, although the narrative was too unsettling for that. It was hovering at 3.5 stars a lot of the time - I just don't love 'unsettling' the way some readers do - but the final pages had the warmth I'd been foolishly wanting, and so up it bumps to 4.
Also: my least favourite book cover of the year.
Fleur, the narrator, is very interesting, as are the varied responses to her in other reviews - among them 'likeable', and 'unreliable' (in the literary sense). She's strangely unsettling, and part of that is that she also isn't as unsettling as you sometimes expect she may become. In the first couple of chapters, I had déjà vu - perhaps I had read a few pages of this standing in a library or bookshop in the 90s - and I kept thinking how, as a teenager, I'd might have taken Fleur's opinions as right all round and to be emulated. Now I could see that she coded, sometimes, as intended to be unlikeable - yet she never actually became nefarious. In the end I concluded she was a type of spiky individual I like and when I meet one, I'm so glad to find someone who agrees with me about xyz and who doesn't fit in in certain ways I recognise, and sometimes tries to play the game, sometimes not. (‘You know,’ Dottie said, ‘there’s something a bit harsh about you, Fleur. You’re not really womanly, are you?’ …To show her I was a woman…) But on the other hand it's probably best that with them I never talk about abc, because we'd definitely disagree, and that I don't confide about anything that sounds a bit soft. She was another of these characters, like Gretel in this year's Booker shortlisted Everything Under, whom I'd perhaps prefer to talk to than read about within the confines of the novel. Fleur seems so real in her unstereotypical personality, which itself has twists and turns compared with most literary characters who seem cardboard cutouts by comparison: sometimes she's kind when you hadn't expected it, and just when you figured she's actually really nice after all, she says something catty. This is how people are in real life, not in books, perhaps especially when young and still figuring things out.
Yet she is also a notably unrealistic device of 1980s metafiction - a loud, raucous context (alongside Martin Amis) in which I never would have thought, of my own accord, to place this tale of more-or-less genteel machinations. (It's only a few open references to bodily fuctions and sex that indicate it wasn't written in the 50s or early 60s; otherwise it feels very much of that era.) Understanding, via the introduction by Mark Lawson, that there are 'autobiographical associations' lurking in the novel made me more interested in Muriel Spark as a person. I've never especially liked Lawson on TV and radio, but here, without his broadcast manner or the glibness of newspaper columns, it became apparent that he has some good insights into literature. There is plenty explained here which I wouldn't have spotted otherwise, as I've only read two or three books of Spark's previously and had read very little about the woman herself. If I'd ever known she was Catholic, I'd forgotten, and because I was used to seeing her defined foremost as a Scottish writer, had no idea that back in the 70s she'd been seen as one among Britain's major Catholic novelists of the 20th century, along with Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Anthony Burgess. (I'd tended to bracket Burgess with Ballard instead, as one with an interest in the shock of the new, whilst Waugh and Greene, it's easier to understand grouped together.) David Lodge, too, is mentioned, for metafiction, though Catholics were also a feature of several of his novels.
I love the book's milieu of shabby-genteel bedsit life and full time work with strange characters, which feels far more realistic than most contemporary books about young writers. Regardless of the non-existence of internet, this is still way realler now than Tao Lin or Sheila Heti. (Where are all the great new novels in which authors house-sit and work in temp admin jobs, and pare down that online grocery order to as little as possible over the minimum £40?) Spark's phrase for these circumstances "on the grubby edge of the literary world" also gives me the pithy description I'd been needing for Vernon Subutex - which I've been reading slowly for the last couple of weeks - vis a vis the music world. Fleur has a tacit self-assurance which is unaffected by the differences in wealth and class she encounters at work; there's no reason to believe she isn't English, but this kind of confident semi-detachment from English social structures strikes me as characteristic of educated Scots people, perhaps especially of an older generation. This attitude, and the setting made me want to love the book, although the narrative was too unsettling for that. It was hovering at 3.5 stars a lot of the time - I just don't love 'unsettling' the way some readers do - but the final pages had the warmth I'd been foolishly wanting, and so up it bumps to 4.
Also: my least favourite book cover of the year.
July 31, 2024
I said, "Dottie's sort of the general reader in my mind."
"Fuck the general reader," Solly said, "because in fact the general reader doesn't exist."
"That's what I say," Edwina yelled. "Just fuck the general reader. No such person."
Introducing Fleur Talbot, a now-successful novelist looking back on the escapade of getting her first novel published. Under normal circumstances it is difficult enough, but Fleur’s greatest obstacle is the cultish Autobiographical Association, masterminded by Sir Quentin Oliver. Fleur may not be one of the Talbots of Talbot Grange, but she is one of Muriel Spark's most endearing creations.
Had it been published in the 1950s instead of the 1980s it would definitively not have contained much of what it does i.e. the quote above, which every aspiring novelist should have tattooed on their forearm. I also found it to be more friendly (meaning less vicious) toward gay and lesbian characters and relationships than some of Spark’s other work has been. One of her best. There is only one question that now remains—does life imitate art or does art imitate life? Two—can you ever really trust a narrator? Three—ever heard of Dexedrine? It is literally speed.
May 12, 2019
I find Muriel Spark novellas the perfect reading choice when I’m exhausted, burned out, unhappy, or otherwise in a bad mood. They are always brilliantly written and centre upon women who respond to difficult situations and annoying people with incredible verve. The behaviour of Spark’s leading women isn’t necessarily something to aspire to in every case, but it’s always interesting, unconventional, and instructive. Thus they cheer me up. ‘Loitering with Intent’ is narrated by Fleur Talbot, an aspiring novelist with a peculiar secretarial job. She has a voice of magnificent asperity, at once artistic and deeply pragmatic. I loved her throughout this twisty, tense tale of her friends and lovers, employers and enemies, and the overlap between them. It’s set in 1949-50, for the most part in bleak postwar London. After taking the secretarial job, Fleur meets a collection of eccentrics and finds their behaviour oddly similar to her unpublished novel ‘Warrender Chase’. She makes friends with an elderly lady and writes on throughout strange happenings, showing admirable focus and good cheer in the face of great provocation. Spark’s writing displays its usual excellent sharpness and deadpan wit:
I would gladly quote all of the many conversations between Fleur and Dottie, every line a gem. The novella is pure joy from beginning to end. Reading Spark is a helpful reminder that art can spring from life’s most mundane idiocies.
There was a phone in my room connected to a switchboard in the basement. I got no reply, which was not unusual, and I rattled to gain attention. The red-faced house-boy, underpaid and bad-tempered, who lived in with his wife and children in those regions, burst into the room shouting at me to stop rattling the phone. Apparently the switchboard was in process of repair and a man was working overtime on it. “The board’s asunder,” bellowed the boy. I liked the phrase and picked it out for myself from the wreckage of the moment, as was my wont.
[...]
“Father Egbert Delaney,” said this handsome girl, “believes that Satan is a woman. He told me as much and I think he ought to be made to resign. It’s an insult to women.”
“It does seem so,” I said. “Why don’t you tell him?”
“I think you, as secretary, Fleur, should take it up with him and report the matter to Sir Quentin.”
“But if I tell him Satan is a man he’ll think it an insult to men.”
She said, “Personally, I don’t believe in Satan.”
“Well, that’s all right then,” I said.
“What’s all right then?”
“If Satan doesn’t exist, why bother if it’s a man or woman we’re talking about?”
I would gladly quote all of the many conversations between Fleur and Dottie, every line a gem. The novella is pure joy from beginning to end. Reading Spark is a helpful reminder that art can spring from life’s most mundane idiocies.
July 7, 2021
The narrator of this fictional autobiography, Fleur Talbot, sounds very much like Muriel Spark’s younger self: it was written in 1981 but set in post-war London where Fleur is a struggling writer. There is a wonderful cast of characters – her one-time lover Leslie, (also husband of her friend Dottie), her close friend Solly, the devious publisher Revisson Doe (who sounds like an anagram of something); but especially the pompous and status-obsessed Sir Quentin Oliver and his entourage - his 90-year-old “mummy,” Lady Edwina, who forms a close bond with Fleur and who is far less ga-ga than Sir Quentin thinks, the housekeeper Beryl Tims, and so on. All drawn with such precision and brilliance, and contrasting with Fleur who reveals little about herself.
There’s something underhand and cultlike about Sir Quentin and his hold over the rather pathetic members of his Autobiographical Association – “Sir Quentin always insists on complete frankness,” they intone. Sir Q is collecting their life stories, which are not to be published until after the members’ deaths, and Fleur has taken a secretarial job with Sir Q that hilariously involves her “retouching” of the members’ autobiographies which are tediously dire.
The job is to tide Fleur over while she is consumed by finishing her first novel “Warrender Chase.” Fragments of it are quoted here and there, though it seems a bland and curiously bloodless work.
Mysteriously though, her as-yet unpublished novel becomes a mirror for events at the Association.
Through a convoluted sequence of events Fleur retrieves her work but even she is confounded when Sir Quentin appears to follow the path of her protagonist Warrender Chase to his death in a car accident.
I have to say parts of Loitering with Intent didn’t hang together perfectly, which does seem to be a recurring thing with Spark’s writing. Why was Sir Quentin blackmailing the Association members? Not for money according to Fleur but I never did find the reason, so four stars for the plot.
But then, how much could be consistent with an unreliable narrator and an absurdist plot? Five stars for the voice and characterization!
There’s something underhand and cultlike about Sir Quentin and his hold over the rather pathetic members of his Autobiographical Association – “Sir Quentin always insists on complete frankness,” they intone. Sir Q is collecting their life stories, which are not to be published until after the members’ deaths, and Fleur has taken a secretarial job with Sir Q that hilariously involves her “retouching” of the members’ autobiographies which are tediously dire.
The job is to tide Fleur over while she is consumed by finishing her first novel “Warrender Chase.” Fragments of it are quoted here and there, though it seems a bland and curiously bloodless work.
Mysteriously though, her as-yet unpublished novel becomes a mirror for events at the Association.
“I was finding it extraordinary how throughout the period I had been working on the novel, right from Chapter One, characters and situations, images and phrases that I absolutely needed for the book simply appeared as if from nowhere into my range of perception.”Is it life imitating art or vice-versa? Sir Quentin, who has obtained her manuscript through devious means, thinks the latter and threatens to sue Fleur.
Through a convoluted sequence of events Fleur retrieves her work but even she is confounded when Sir Quentin appears to follow the path of her protagonist Warrender Chase to his death in a car accident.
I have to say parts of Loitering with Intent didn’t hang together perfectly, which does seem to be a recurring thing with Spark’s writing. Why was Sir Quentin blackmailing the Association members? Not for money according to Fleur but I never did find the reason, so four stars for the plot.
But then, how much could be consistent with an unreliable narrator and an absurdist plot? Five stars for the voice and characterization!
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