Loved the novel and loved the story. There was too much inside British stuff in the novel for a Houstonian like me to get the irony of.

Dougal Douglas (or Douglas Dougal, depending on who you're talking to) may be a devil, and some people think he seems more Irish than Scottish. Whatever else he is, he is a lot of fun. THE BALLAD OF PECKHAM RYE lacks the sympathetic, possibly autobiographical central character found in many Spark novels (THE COMFORTERS, THE BACHELORS, etc.); however, it doens't fall into the black hole that swallows THE DRIVER'S SEAT or other works consumed by Spark's sense of evil. Instead, Dougal Douglas, the ever-present mischief-maker, takes the place of the sympathetic center. He wreaks havoc, but only by bringing out the devil in others--he himself has a kind of curious innocence in the midst of their scheming and violence, and acts as a (presumable) spokesman for Spark when he categorizes their various moralities (Functional, Emotional, Puritanical and Christian).

Such a summary doesn't begin to capture the delight and wit of one of Spark's most enjoyable and economical (again, not a page too long, which cannot be said for many of even our best writers today) books.

Dougal Douglas, the protagonist of this short novel, is a modern-day trickster, stirring up the sleeping industrial town of Peckham, where secrets and neuroses are in abundance. I loved Ms. Spark's sense of comedy. It makes her books always a fun read, and it's subtle enough so it never becomes an annoyance to distract one from the story.

If this book were written in a serious tone, I fear it could be taken as very offensive slander. Instead, it is a brilliant send-up of Watergate and similar abuses of power. It centers on the election of a new abbess.

Candidate 1 recites her favorite (Protestant) English poetry rather than the Psalms, supports a strong sense of societial class, and uses electronic eavesdropping as a mere extention of listening to convent gossip as a way to maintain proper order.

Candidate 2 is compulsive regarding order in her sewing box, maintains an all-too-public liaison with a young Jesuit (outdoors rather than linen closets), and leads the sewing nuns to dreams of freedom.

Add to this a missionary nun using Machivelli to deal with cannibal and vegetarian tribes, young Jesuits bungling break-ins, a nun cross-dressing to deliver hush money ... and you have an absolutely hilarious study in justification of means to insure one's "destiny".

I was about nine years old when the Watergate scandal broke, and I must confess that I don't know much about it beyond our national mythology of bugging, break-ins, erased tapes and G. Gordon Liddy. Is this satire fair to Nixon and his gang? I don't know, but I suspect that it is. At any rate, it remains a witty parable of hypocrisy in high places and, given the rate at which our technology is improving, its comments on surveillance are bound to keep this book topical for quite some time to come.

Muriel Spark's "Watergate novel" transmutes the interesting but often squalid Washington scandal into something better--the Abbess is more sure-footed and considerably more charming than Nixon, imperious and impervious where Nixon was paranoid. As usual, Spark takes the material of life and, well, to put it bluntly, she improves upon it. Of course, this is the task of the true artist, but Spark doesn't soften the blow of discovering just how disordered and unsavory real-life often is--as when she is dispatching her characters to their various fates, she is sharp, sympathetic, and economical. The perfect necessity of every word is the key, I think to Spark's novels.

Literary blathering aside, this is also one of Muriel Spark's funniest books, which makes it doubly wonderful.

I enjoyed settling down with this interesting vignette of the lives and times of a group of single women in a hostel in London in the spring of 1945. The war in Europe has ended, and these unconquerable gals have survived. They have lived through the blitz; survived on low rations; and have kept their social world going by sharing one fancy dress among themselves. Blaring radios, and shrieks of laughter permeate the old building that has been their home for the last several years. Their amorous adventures have been fleeting ones in accord with the uncertainties of a world at war. We are now seeing them all as the first days of the rest of their lives are about to begin.

Ah, but Ms. Spark is not telling us this story just to provide an evening's light entertainment. A tragedy occurs that once again points out the absurdity of war. It is sad that there has been no time in any of our lives when this message is obsolete. It's a short novel, almost a short story writ long, but it doesn't need to be any longer than it is. The author has taken just the amount of time she has needed to paint her colorful literary portrait...and then put a big smudge right in the middle of it.

Muriel Spark recreates a world that has long since vanished in her depiction of the May of Teck club, a residence for young single women . The story takes place during the final year of World War II. There are frequent changes in viewpoint and time period which became distracting. It is clear that Spark is interested in the sound of words in all their richness and haphazardness, but the collaging strategy takes force from the final tragedy. Lurking behind the narrative are a cast of characters possessing various degrees of egoism and spirtituality. The most fully drawn is Jane, a young woman employed in "the world of books." One of her unusual modes of employment is writing fake fan letters to living famous authors on behalf of a collector in the hopes of receiving handwritten replies. In her we find an idealized perspective on the literary world blended with pragmatism in her machinations. Other personalities reside at the edge of the narration and their motivations are difficult to credit. I am fairly sure that Spark is pointing out the ambiguities of our psyches, but she stacks the deck against any efforts we might make to discover what makes the characters tick.

THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS evokes the inner workings of a "group" of women as delightfully as THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE. The difference here is that the "authority" of Miss Brodie from the first novel is missing, and the girls are a little more grown up; the world around them has grown grimmer--there's the blitz and the prospect of Labour victory...

Spark always manages to create great entertainment out of a profound, humane, and sympathetic but iron-willed moral judgment, and THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS is no exception. Its particular merit is that it evokes a time and place in a nostalgic but unsentimental manner better than most of her works.

This book's weakest point--a literary gimmick--kicks in early: a writer begins to hear a voice narrating her life, accompanied by, you guessed it, the clicking of typewriter keys. However, as annoying as this trite little device is, it has all but disappeared midway through the book, letting a somewhat more complex concept take over. The plot itself involves smuggling and tangled relationships, with a wink at English Catholicism. In the end, I've given this book four stars primarily because I enjoyed the setting, somewhere between the worlds of "Lucky Jim" and "Excellent Women."

Muriel Spark's first novel, THE COMFORTERS, is a genuine classic. The intrustion of the "literary device" is marvelous because it is anything but a gimmick. For one thing, the mysterious metafictional typewriter (from an author composing a novel you might be reading) is inspired by experiences Spark describes in her autobiography. Aural hallucinations contributed to two masterpieces of English prose around this time--Evelyn Waugh's THE ORDEAL OF GILBERT PINFOLD takes a different approach, less cosmic and perhaps more comic. In both cases, however, the voices are central to the novel, and provide a marvelous opportunity for conveying a unique (and, I think, in both cases, -true-) view of our world.

The other undercurrent here is Spark's conversion to Roman Catholicism. Caroline's attitude may not be Spark's, but I hope it is--skewering irritating modern Pharisees inside the Church as gleefully as those outside of it.

The Scottish born writer, Muriel Spark, who was born in 1918, wrote the novel Memento Mori in 1959. It is a really satirical commentary on life, coloured by her Roman Catholic faith.
The content of the book tells us the story of some rather old British upper class people who get anonymous telephone calls, in which they are reminded of their soon death. The message is, "Remember, you must die". The novel takes place in the early fifties or so. It begins with the first anonymous call, which seventy-nine year old Dame Lettie Colston gets and ends about one and a half year later, when most of the described characters have died. Within that period we discover a complex net of relations between those old people, ranging from love affairs in their youth time to blackmailing and blaming each other.
The book is indeed a very fascinating and readable story. At the beginning you get to know each character separately, but deeper in it, the whole matrix of their relations is drawn up. Mrs. Spark describes perfectly the way how the very aged people live in their past. They keep on thinking of events that had happened in their youth and for that reason the reader gets the impression that they have an enormous fear of things which will come. These are things like becoming insane and mad. Nevertheless, death is the topic, from which they are most threatened of. In my opinion you can see this behaviour in the way how they react concerning their anonymous calls. They are very upset about those happenings and it is their main goal to catch the culprit. This gives the novel a distinct tough of mystery. However, they have never found out who the caller was. The main statement of the story for the characters as well as for the reader is: "if you do not remember death, death reminds you to do so". What Mrs. Spark means is that anybody should be aware of the topic death, because it comes anyway and you can't do anything against it.
Another very important thing, ironically described in the book is the religious and conservative way of living of many Brits. The characters in the story describe themselves as very religious, but when they begin thinking of their adolescent behaviour, contrary secrets are lifted. As an example, we could use the characters of Lisa Broke, Guy Leet, Charmian and Godfrey. The last two people had been married for years, but within them she had an affair with Guy Leet. He had, by himself additionally an affair with Lisa Broke. When Lisa comes behind that secret, she wants to tell everything to Godfrey. The only way for Guy Leet to prevent a disaster was a marriage with her to calm her down.
All in all, the book is very engaging, though I think that the ending of the book is rather confusing. In my opinion Mrs. Spark could have replaced the appearance of Godfrey's son Eric and Matt O'Brien with a more detailed finish, because if you read through the last pages, you keep on waiting for a suitable showdown, which does not appear. The view informations you get deal with the character's death dates and the diseases from which they were suffering of.

I highly recommend Memento Mori. First of all, the elderly -- and we are talking about the advanced in age, sixty-eight year olds are consider the "young" -- rarely receive fictional treatment. As a thirtysomething reader, I found Spark's take on the topic interesting and the ending (as well as the mystery of the phone calls) oh so effective.

Spark takes pains to show how the wisdom that is supposed to accrete over the years has not worked and her characters display the same vices and virtues that they have their whole lives. The ending is sudden and heartbreaking because the absence of direction the characters show never abates.

Another stronger effort by one of Britain's literary doyennes.

Loved this book. It was witty, insightful, and very well-crafted. The subject of old age is treated not only without the usual sappiness and maudlin sentimentality, but with irreverence. Though the book is entertaining, it touches upon a number of important ideas- the meaning (or lack thereof) of life, how modern society regards death, and the treatment of the elderly in today's society. Though the book was written in the mid to late 1950's, it is just as relevant today as it was when originally published.

I found this book on my shelves, I bought it in 1981! so it has been collecting quite a lot of dust. Like the previous reviwer I cannot look upon this novel as a satirical piece, it seems to be to be quite accurate living in a publicity mad world, as we are. I find her prose a bit detached which made it a difficult to get close to the characters. The desciption of the characters left something to desire. Even though we are aware of why they do what they do, I feel that I'm not really convinced by their actions. Even so, a good read, with som pleasent Italian colour.

I am a bit reluctant to express an opinion about this short but deeply satisfying novel, first published in 1968, because it does not seem to me to be a satire. I can see that perhaps _The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie_ is a satire, and _The Abbess of Crewe_ surely is. Most of Spark's work is short and has considerable bit. She herself labeled _The Public Image_ "an ethical shocker," but I'm even less sure of what that means than I am whether the book is intended to satirize or portray a rising film star whose public image is threatened.

I also don't agree with the cover description of Annabel having "made the fatal mistake of believing her public image." It seems to me that she knows what that image is and how to maintain it and recognizes the rewards she reaps from it, but that she has not confused her self with her image/typical role.

The two main adult female characters are admirably poised and fully ethical. The two main male characters are needy, greedy heels jealous of Annabel's success. There is a harridan female child and some professionally supportive males (a director and a lawyer), so it's not entirely women good men bad, but the bad men are very destructive indeed.

The local (Roman) color is amusing and the ending is very satisfying. Also I read the book from cover-to-cover in less time than a recording of Puccini's "Turandot."

Muriel Spark's new novel interweaves the story of Lord Lucan, a dissolute English Earl who murdered his children's nanny and tried to kill his wife in 1974, then disappeared, with the story of Hildegard Wolf, a psychiatrist with an unconventional method of treating patients and a secret past of her own.

Rumours of Lord Lucan's whereabouts continue to pop up: noone knows if he is still alive or not. In this book, Spark has two separate "Lord Lucan"'s visit Dr. Wolf for treatment. Before long Wolf is wondering how much they know about her, how much they know about each other, and which if either of them is the real Lord Lucan. Several other people are drawn into the search for Lord Lucan, including an old friend of his, and the daughter of another old friend of his, and Hildegard's long-time lover. The resolution is amusing and unexpected.

Spark considers the complicity of accomplices in crime, and the morality of the "upper classes", and the persistence of guilt. Her writing is as always extremely clever -- dare I say it sparkles? -- and the book is slantingly funny and morally insistent and a thoroughgoing joy to read. At 82, Muriel Spark remains a truly brilliant writer. (Like another reviewer, I can't quite bring myself to rate this 5 stars -- but only because the book is so short. It's better than the average 4 star book, at any rate.)

Muriel Sparks' latest novel "Aiding & Abetting" doesn't take up much shelf space but sure proves the adage that less may be more ! This psychological thriller, based on the unsolved Lord Lucan murder mystery, is so cleverly constructed and seamlessly meshed with the subject of another true story - that of the fake stigmatic Beate Pappenheim - I found myself unable to stop until I finished it in one sitting. Sparks' ingenious plotting is once again evident in the way the pulsating narrative takes unexpected twists and turns that keeps you in total suspense with the unyielding promise of a surprise ending. I felt my heart thumping and my mind racing just watching the two Lucans and Hildegarde and their aiders connive and plot to outwit each other. The novel may have taken class as its starting point but it is blood that binds their fate. Nobody writes like Sparks these days. Her dry wit and rare economy with words make for an eloquence that is both unique and unparalleled. It is also a hallmark of great writing. "Aiding & Abetting" may be her best work in recent times. This slim novel sure packs a wallop. It comes highly recommended.

Muriel Spark hasn't lost her touch. AIDING AND ABETTING isn't one of her very best novels (of her more recent books I prefer REALITY AND DREAMS, although AIDING AND ABETTING is far superior to SYMPOSIUM), but it's still a very good book.

As one reviewer below notes, a curious doubling is one of the tropes of this book--mistaken and overlapping identities mask, I suspect, a concern with lack of identity. Spark handles her various themes with her usual grace, wit, and, most importantly, economy. This book is 166 pages, and Spark uses every one of them well (even when she tells us something twice, we can be sure it is for a good reason).

One final note: AIDING AND ABETTING and DECLARE make for interesting comparison. I have no idea whether Muriel Spark and Tim Powers have much overlap in audience, but perhaps they should. They write very different books, but these two show an interesting coincidence of subject matter. Powers and Spark investigate the possibilities of infamous British aristocrats, in Powers' case Kim Philby, and in Spark's Lord Lucan. The Burgess and Maclean case comes up in both books, and the idea of the decaying English aristocracy as letting them and Lucan escape in a fit of apathy, disbelief, class loyalty, and moral paralysis is important to both writers' aims. Spark conjures up a future for Lucan while Powers' fantasy of history "explains" Philby and indeed the entire Cold War. Doubling, noted above as key to Spark's book, is equally important to Powers, on a more fantastic level. In the end, they take different approaches: Powers' Philby is fascinating, complex, sad and deservedly damned; Spark's Lucan is a study in the banality and triviality of evil. There is mystery, but Lucan is too small to be of great interest to his own story.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a very interesting book. There are many different themes and moods. And you never really know what to expect. The setting is mostly within the school that in which Miss. Brodie is a teacher but in the least sense of the meaning. Miss. Brodie is in her "prime" and doesn't really teach what she's is supposed to but what she wants too and what she feels is "important".
Miss. Brodie picks six students and they quickly become her favorites and are know to everyone as "The Brodie set" Miss. Brodie seems to live her life through these six girls. She teaches them lessons about art, love, and how to be a proper woman. Not only does she teach the girls about all of this but she tends to demonstrate it as well. She encourages the girls to become sexually active and tells them of all the stories of the love of her life and how she would not do it, but always hinting that she had. She would take them to plays and tell them about the greatest writers and poets, but it would always have to do with how polite they were, never really with the artists themselves.
Miss. Brodie is a very unique women and doesn't care what others think. She knows that the head mistress of the school despises her and is willing o do anything to get rid of her but she needs some ones help. The book goes through the lives of the girls from when they were younger and in their "prime" until they are older and no longer associate with Miss. Brodie. The big plot of the story however is that Miss. Brodie gets fired and it is because of someone in her precious Brodie set.
The book provides you with lessons of individuality, group identity, loyalty, rebellions, love, and relationships. A good book for anyone to read.

I remember reading this book in high school, like most of the reviewers on this page. And, like most of the reviewers here, I recall that at the time I found this book incredibly boring; its only redeeming quality was that it ended after 150 pages. It has been 6 years since I was subjected to Brodie, and I've read hundreds of books since then, yet for some reason Brodie is one of only a handful of novels that has truly remained with me. Miss Brodie, so arrogant and destructive, and Sandy, who goes through what can only be described as one of literature's most trying adolescences, are two of the most deeply human characters one will encounter in 20th century English literature. Add to that a strong feminist undercurrent and a unique perspective on pre-war politics, and you have a recipe for an enduring classic. Spark is a very good, though not immensely talented writer, (which might explain why this book is so difficult for high school students to get through) but she succeeds in crafting an interesting group of characters, and has a great deal to say for such a short novel. So, for all the students who end up reading this book in 9th grade English, I would say that even if you don't enjoy the book now, there is a reason why it is being taught; it is one of those little novels, like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Catcher in the Rye, that almost everyone who reads through it is ultimately better for. For anyone else looking for a quick read that will stick with them, I recommend this title without hesitation. It is certainly not the greatest book ever written (as dozens of young reviewers can certainly attest) but it is deserving of its status as one of the 100 best of the 20th century.

"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" is the first book I read by this famous Scottish writer, and right after I finished, I searched the web to learn that Dame Spark has played an important role in the development of trends in modern, contemporary British literature. Due to the heavyweight nature of the reading matter I recently devoured, I decided to buy the shortest book by Muriel Spark, and it turned out to be one of her most important ones, with a charming literary archetype, the lovable Miss Brodie. At first, I had thought to myself - what an amusing little book! - but when I finished the novel, I had quite a different set of perceptions, although I still think that the essence of this this book is more of anecdotal humor than of anything else. A perfect, encyclopedic example of how, in literary fiction, delicious entertainment may be successfully married with profound philosophical issues.

Only a small subset of pupils are lucky to be educated, and prepared for life by teachers with a true calling, like Miss Brodie. Teaching is an occupation like any other, yet it's the most instrumental for shaping the personality and outlook of a young human being. Some parents are good teachers, that's their duty after all, though again only a small subset of parents are the true mentors worth their salt. Yet it's the school and then the university, that has enormous impact on us. Being a teenager means to find oneself in a constant, continuous trauma of discovery, where all kinds of events and situations force us to make decisions, to make judgments, to distinguish the right from the wrong, and last but not least, what to do with one's life. So many of us wander aimlessly because there is no one who might give us a helping hand, who might nurse the blooming talents we might have, and so we drift through life and wonder why some are luckier than others, or do not wonder at all, which is even worse. Young people need some authority to look up to; not the authority in the authoritarian sense, but in the classical, ancient meaning of this word. Education at its best is not a dead transmission of edification, but an active development of the soul and the mind, a guided development of culture, where a sensitive young person learns to not be afraid to evaluate the world around her.

Miss Brodie had only a short-lived contact with a small set of young girls, but she managed to influence their whole life, whether the initial enchantment with the mentor lasted forever or not. "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" is a satire, thus it should not be taken literally, in case you were so inclined. I have been lucky to have been guided by mentors, and I will never forget their lessons, although most of them have been implicit, and then many of them understood only after a long time. This novel means the world to me, because if there is one thing I was born to do, it's teaching, and teaching in a highly personal way. There is little that can make me more happy than a contribution to someone's young life, a devotion of one's prime, to quote the ingenious Dame Muriel Spark.

This book is very complex and slightly hard to follow simply because it is told by someone and not written in the present. It is also quite violent. It is twisted and morbid but makes a very good story to last a while. Compared to Jane Eyre written by Ms. Bronte's sister, Charlotte, this is a bit dull. In Jane Eyre, the love of the story was more visible while in Wuthering Heights, Cathy falls in love because of money and doesn't show the true feelings she has for Heathclif. All in all, this was an enjoyable book though it could have been much better.

I picked this book up when I ran out of reading material over the holidays. It looked great from the book cover (but you know what they say . . .) I found it to be a tedious book, very long and somewhat dull. Worst of all, when the "weird part" takes over -- it is very hard to follow. Impossible to understand what actually befell the primary male character. I can't recommend it unless you get it for free and have lots of time on your hands.