The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means, The Driver's Seat, The Only Problem (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) - Hardcover
In Muriel Spark's novels the brevity is only equalled by the brilliance. This collection of four stories, each a miniature masterpiece, illustrates her development over four decades. Despite the seriousness of their themes, all are fantastic comedies of manners, bristling with wit. Her most famous book, The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, has been made into a play and a film. It explores the perils of personal and political infatuation among schoolgirls and their teachers. Salvation is the theme of The Girls Of Slender Means, which vividly evokes the life of postwar London. The Driver's Seat, made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor, charts the heroine's descent into madness. The Only Problem is a witty fable about suffering, which brings the Book of Job to bear on contemporary terrorism.
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From the Inside Flap:
The brevity of Muriel Spark's novels is equaled only by their brilliance. These four novels, each a miniature masterpiece, illustrate her development over four decades. Despite the seriousness of their themes, all four are fantastic comedies of manners, bristling with wit.
Spark's most celebrated novel, THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE, tells the story of a charismatic schoolteacher's catastrophic effect on her pupils. THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS" is a beautifully drawn portrait of young women living in a hostel in London in the giddy postwar days of 1945. THE DRIVER'S SEAT follows the final haunted hours of a woman descending into madness. And THE ONLY PROBLEM is a witty fable about suffering that brings the Book of Job to bear on contemporary terrorism.
All four novels give evidence of one of the most original and unmistakable voices in contemporary fiction. Characters are vividly etched in a few words; earth-shaking events are lightly touched on. Yet underneath the glittering surface there is an obsessive probing of metaphysical questions: the meaning of good and evil, the need for salvation, the search for significance.
About the Author:
Sir Frank Kermode has been Northcliffe Professor Modern English Literature at University College, London, King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge and Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard. His many books include The Sense of an Ending, Romantic Image and a memoir, Not Entitled.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherRandom House
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 1857152743
- ISBN 13 9781857152746
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages512
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