The Comforters

by Muriel Spark

Book Overview

Todos querr?amos vivir en una novela de Muriel Spark, donde nada es lo que parece. Donde parece que todo es divertido e ingenioso, pero puede resultar duro y siniestro. Esto es una novela. Una novela... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811212858
• ISBN13: 9780811212854
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Spark's First Endures

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.

What's it all about?

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."