CatrionaI've decided to re-read all of Muriel Spark's novels, in order of publication. Just finished The Comforters. Loved it as much as I did the first time round, possibly more. Will need to read other books in between each Spark, as a mental and emotional sorbet, though. Too much Spark at once is not good for your sanity. #MurielSpark
Culture | The Guardian USFrom luxury ‘dupes’ to literary doubles: why doppelgangers are everywhere right now https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/mar/06/doppelgangers-sinners-impersonator-conspiracy-theory-mar-a-lago-luxury-dupes-hogg-bronte-nabokov-spark #Books #Culture #Film #Fashion #Sinners #VladimirNabokov #MurielSpark
From luxury ‘dupes’ to literary doubles: why doppelgangers are everywhere right now
AI ‘twins’, Mar-a-Lago lookalikes, Melania impersonator conspiracies … doubles proliferate in today’s culture – and nowhere more so than in a series of unsettling new novels that draw on a rich gothic tradition to tap into our paranoid times
Assoc for Scottish LiteratureBeware of Men Bearing Flowers
“There is a band of (usually) male critical admirers who deny the significance of her love life as if they are gallantly upholding her honour…”
For Valentines’s Day: Prof Willy Maley asks: what does Muriel Spark have to say about love & romance?
https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/writing-and-authors/muriel-spark-on-love
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #MurielSpark #romance #love #ValentinesDay
My Own Delightful Gordon,
Your letter has moved me deeply as you may imagine. But alas, I must ever decline to be Mrs Lowther…
—from Muriel Spark’s THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1961): a love letter – as imagined by her pupils – from Miss Brodie to Mr Lowther, the music teacher
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #novel #novella #womenwriters #MurielSpark #love #loveletters #humour #ValentinesDay
I think that authors’ ghosts creep back
Nightly to haunt the sleeping shelves
And find the books they wrote.
Those authors put final, semi-final touches,
Sometimes whole paragraphs.
Whole pages are added, re-written, revised…
—Muriel Spark, “Authors’ Ghosts”
published in COMPLETE POEMS (Carcanet, 2015)
18/18
#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #poem #poetry
THE CROOKED DIVIDEND
Essays on Muriel Spark
ed. Gerard Carruthers & Helen Stoddart
Muriel Spark in British culture; the influence of Scottish literary traditions on her work; how she explores gender, religion, politics; & more
Also online via Project MUSE
17/18
https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/occasional_papers/the-crooked-dividend/
#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters
AFTERWORDS: Muriel Spark
“One’s prime is elusive…”
—On BBC Sounds: writers Ian Rankin & Zoë Strachan discuss Muriel Spark’s life & work with National Library of Scotland curator Colin McIlroy, & Spark’s friend & memoirist, Alan Taylor
16/18
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0018238
#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters
“knowing the challenges Spark overcame makes me doubly grateful for her”
Writing for the Royal Literary Fund, Lauren J. Joseph reflects on a quality many writers have to develop – the “sheer bloody-mindedness” Spark had in spades
15/18
https://www.rlf.org.uk/posts/the-relentless-brilliance-of-muriel-spark/
#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #writing
“It is a good thing to go to Paris for a few days if you have had a lot of trouble, and that is my advice to everyone except Parisians.”
—extracts from A GOOD COMB, by Muriel Spark, ed. Penelope Jardine – via @literaryhub
14/18
https://lithub.com/a-few-words-of-indispensible-advice-from-muriel-spark/
#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters #advice #Paris
“Somehow things happened, odd things, when Muriel was around,” recalled her friend Shirley Hazzard. “Everything that happened to Muriel,” according to … Barbara Epler, “had been foreseen”, usually in her books themselves.
—The unnerving vision of Muriel Spark
13/18
#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thCentury #WomenWriters
