Not my kind of book. It´s not funny at all and I really don´t like the vicious tone of this novel. And I really, really don´t want to read another page of this novel.

I really don´t like the tone of this book. Based on the plot and the unpleasant characters, I have to assume that this book is meant to be funny ... or at least that there is some sarcastic wit to it.

Unfortunately this book reads like Muriel Sparks has meant every single word she has written down. It isn´t particularly funny or witty and the sarcasm is lost on me.

So I´m left with an mediocre plot, which I don´t see the point of, and some really unlikeable characters, who have to be the most vicious elderly people in the history of literature.

I need a break from this for the rest of the day.

"Afraid I´m late," he said. "Is the party over? Are you all Lisa´s sinisters and bothers?"

The party is a funeral!

All the elderly characters that have been introduced so far are unlikeable, but this old curmudgeon takes the cake for being the most unpleasant one. At least so far.

Miss Brodie is narcissistic, kind, selfish, considerate, moody and happy all at the same time. The line quoted at the beginning of the synopsis says it all. She wants these girls to adore her, to be malleable, to bend to her will. She needs them as an extension of herself, and to live out missed dreams of her own.

The reader is allowed access to the elusive and exclusive Brodie set, those girls chosen by Miss Brodie to be nurtured and educated the Brodie way. She is deliberately careless with their education, openly going against convention. In her chosen few it is as if she is trying to manipulate them to her will, to adore her during her prime, to reinforce her ideals about herself and to justify her actions. She is open in her affair, a rebound to a lost love. The ramifications of this affect not just her and her lover but the girls in different ways.

The girls themselves are a wonderful mixture of characters. Muriel Spark shows them as both adolescents and as adults. The fact that Miss Brodie has access to them at a time when they are most impressionable is perhaps the greatest danger, and this is shown in the story. The effects of being part of the Brodie set  are seen in the future, though surprisingly with some positive results.

There is some intrigue throughout the story as it becomes apparent that one of the set betrays Miss Brodie to her employer, who is keen to see the rebellious teacher ousted.

Jean Brodie talks through the majority of the book of this time at school being her prime, and that the girls are lucky and honoured to be able to share her prime with her. Viewing her actions there are a range of emotions elicited. Annoyance that she manipulates the set to her own advantage, to make herself feel better, to justify her prime. There’s also sadness that she shows, sometimes all too clearly, that she is desperate to hold on to her youth, to her vitality and to the position which defines her. She is at heart a lonely woman, unable to express it in way that is not without narcissism.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a novel that is read quickly but which stays with the reader for much longer. More emerges from it as time goes by since reading. This was my first Muriel Spark novel, it won’t be my last.

If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work ... the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp ... The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.

I am trying to get to know Muriel Spark's work a little better before going to an event celebrating her work at the end of this month, so I am reading up on a few of her works because the only one I had known was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

A few books into this little project and I have a new book to use as a benchmark of her work: A Far Cry From Kensington.

It took me a while to get into the book. I even re-read the beginning a couple of times because I just could not make out what she was going on about. Was this a serious book or not? 

Once I set every expectation aside and just let the story unfold, it became pretty clear that not much in the book was what it seemed. Advice given by the MC, was not meant to be serious advice. On the contrary, it was mockery. The whole idea of our larger than life protagonist being singled out and put on show by any of the characters in the novel was a mockery, a spoof, and most of all an exercise in exorcism as little by little our MC finds the confidence in her own voice and her own pursuit of life to stand up to the curses that have tried to bring her down. 

This will probably remain my favourite Spark for quite some time. It was a suspenseful little story told expertly with a lot of wit. Yet, there was also some warmth to it, which was not something I have seen in Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means, or Memento Mori.