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3.55 AVERAGE
3.55 AVERAGE
Sparse yet rich. Sparks has a miraculous capability to tell you just the briefest details and yet open worlds of meaning between the lines.
In the movie, I fell in love with Miss Jean Brodie (or was it Maggie Smith as Jean Brodie?) in the first half of the movie, and grew disillusioned along with the intellectually maturing girls of her set as the story drew on. As a classic I had heard of but not previously seen, I felt confused. Are we supposed to adore her? Pity her? Find her politically shallow and self absorbed? Is she a feminist ahead of her time or a crazy lady you hope your kids won't get as a teacher?
In the book, Spark draws a Miss Brodie who is, initially, less sympathetic than the movie version. This is in spite of the fact that the movie writers drew a more direct line from her to her students' troubles than does the book.
Favorite part of all this so far:
We've recently begun watching Monarch of the Glen and we had a great laugh catching the references to being 'in one's prime!'
It was very interesting to see the differences between the movie and book. Time was compressed, girls were merged and mixed, terrible consequences directly dropped at Miss Brodie's feet in the movie were less clearly her fault in the book. In both, she was politically very odd, possibly naive and bizarrely confused. It's hard to tell, because we see her in what feels like only the same way the girls do. She doesn't reveal to us her inside thoughts or motivations. In the book, it seemed clear that she wanted to live independently and not be married. In the movie, the choice is made to show her as devastated when Mr. Loewther gets engaged. Both versions were good.
In the book, Spark draws a Miss Brodie who is, initially, less sympathetic than the movie version. This is in spite of the fact that the movie writers drew a more direct line from her to her students' troubles than does the book.
Favorite part of all this so far:
We've recently begun watching Monarch of the Glen and we had a great laugh catching the references to being 'in one's prime!'
It was very interesting to see the differences between the movie and book. Time was compressed, girls were merged and mixed, terrible consequences directly dropped at Miss Brodie's feet in the movie were less clearly her fault in the book. In both, she was politically very odd, possibly naive and bizarrely confused. It's hard to tell, because we see her in what feels like only the same way the girls do. She doesn't reveal to us her inside thoughts or motivations. In the book, it seemed clear that she wanted to live independently and not be married. In the movie, the choice is made to show her as devastated when Mr. Loewther gets engaged. Both versions were good.
3.5-4 stars
This was a confusing book for me to listen to, so after I listened, I went back and read over it so I could figure out all the jumps in time (there were a lot of them). Reading it was much easier to keep track of what happened when and it also made it easier to follow the threads of the different themes: sexuality/prime/spinsterhood, education/intrusion, religion/predestination, authority/social groups, instinct/insight. This is a difficult book for me to review because I read it for a book study, but then didn't get a chance to attend and discuss. I believe I could have gained much from the discussion. Still, I enjoyed listening to it (even when it was confusing) and it was both disturbing and humorous, and it was interesting going back over the written version to follow the themes. Overall, I would say this is a book that is worth checking out and would be interesting to discuss with others.
This was a confusing book for me to listen to, so after I listened, I went back and read over it so I could figure out all the jumps in time (there were a lot of them). Reading it was much easier to keep track of what happened when and it also made it easier to follow the threads of the different themes: sexuality/prime/spinsterhood, education/intrusion, religion/predestination, authority/social groups, instinct/insight. This is a difficult book for me to review because I read it for a book study, but then didn't get a chance to attend and discuss. I believe I could have gained much from the discussion. Still, I enjoyed listening to it (even when it was confusing) and it was both disturbing and humorous, and it was interesting going back over the written version to follow the themes. Overall, I would say this is a book that is worth checking out and would be interesting to discuss with others.
There are so many reasons to dislike the titular character of Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She is a lover of Mussolini and the fascist regimes seizing control in Europe in the early 1930s. Even after the war is over, the worst thing she can say about Hitler is that he “was rather naughty.” She is entirely self-centered, wishing to impose her own views of the world onto her students, even as she claims that she is doing the opposite. Her form of lecturing is to talk about herself, her lovers, and her experiences, and she expects the girls to scramble hard at home to learn what they need to in order to pass end of term exams. And of course her designs to have an affair with a man vicariously through one of her students is nothing short of disturbing. Moreover, the narrator can be very dismissive of the woman: “It is not to be supposed that Miss Brodie was unique at this point of her prime; or that (since such things are relative) she was in any way off her head,” which only suggests that Miss Brodie’s level of insanity can only be saved by relativity. “In this light,” Spark sums up her passage describing the “type” of woman Miss Brodie is, “there was nothing outwardly odd about Miss Brodie. Inwardly was a different matter, and it remained to be seen, towards what extremities her nature worked her.”
Nevertheless, even with all these character flaws, Miss Brodie is a captivating woman, as captivating to us as she is to the set of six girls that she has taken under her wings. I cannot help but admire her determination, her confidence, her headstrong nature. I cannot help but love her desire to teach matters of real life instead of lessons to be memorized. And I cannot help but feel the tragic weight of her prime and her fall. Add to this vibrant and complicated character the lives of six young women entering maturity and you have the makings of a wonderful tale.
But of course, what makes the novel so incredible (and it is truly incredible) is not the characters or the story but the writing. Spark’s style is wry and ironic and straightforward and suggestive. These characters and their relationships come to us so simply and simultaneously laden with meaning. One of my favorite techniques is the way that she slides from one moment in time to another, reminding us, for example, that Mary Macgregor will die horribly in a hotel fire running back and forth from one set of flames to another until she falls down and dies, and then proceed with a story of the abuse heaped upon Mary by her classmates and teacher in what were to be the best years of Mary’s short life. As we read the novel and consider Miss Brodie and her realm of influence, Spark continuously throws us way down the road to see where the girls are and what their recollections of Miss Brodie are. Eunice, the sporty girl, will later marry and visit Miss Brodie’s grave on a trip to Edinburgh, but it is made clear from her conversation with her husband that she has not talked of Miss Brodie throughout the whole of their marriage. So even as Miss Brodie declares, “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life,” we are let in on the fact that these girls will not be hers for life. All this movement allows Spark to tell her story and keep us as readers unsettled about what it all means. Miss Brodie is neither hero nor villain, neither culprit nor victim. Or she is both and all.
Similarly, Sandy, the girl whose story this is as much as it is Miss Brodie’s, is a difficult to place character. On the one hand, her flights of fancy in which she has conversations with fictional characters and fictionalizes the lives of people around her is completely winning. On the other hand, her hardening as she sees through Miss Brodie’s plans and understands her to be a flawed human can be painful to behold. In a lot of ways, this is the story of a girl who leaves the childish world, where adults are heroic and brave, and enters adulthood, where she comes to learn that everyone is messed up and selfish and flawed. She gains the knowledge of weakness before she has the experience of her own weakness to allow her to feel compassion for the struggles of her erstwhile heroes. At one point, Miss Brodie talks about her long-ago forefather, Willie Brodie, “a man of substance, a cabinet maker and designer of gibbets” who “died cheerfully on a gibbet of his own devising.” It is clear that Sandy is the gibbet of Miss Brodie’s own devising, the insightful girl she instructed and led to the point that Sandy gave the headmistress the ammunition she needed to fire Miss Brodie with this explanation: “I’m not really interested in world affairs . . . only in putting a stop to Miss Brodie.”
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is funny and heartbreaking and thought-provoking and a blast to read. It is intellectual and emotional. It is simple in its thrust and complicated in its content. It is one of those books I wanted to fly through and crawl through at the same time because I didn’t want it to end.
Nevertheless, even with all these character flaws, Miss Brodie is a captivating woman, as captivating to us as she is to the set of six girls that she has taken under her wings. I cannot help but admire her determination, her confidence, her headstrong nature. I cannot help but love her desire to teach matters of real life instead of lessons to be memorized. And I cannot help but feel the tragic weight of her prime and her fall. Add to this vibrant and complicated character the lives of six young women entering maturity and you have the makings of a wonderful tale.
But of course, what makes the novel so incredible (and it is truly incredible) is not the characters or the story but the writing. Spark’s style is wry and ironic and straightforward and suggestive. These characters and their relationships come to us so simply and simultaneously laden with meaning. One of my favorite techniques is the way that she slides from one moment in time to another, reminding us, for example, that Mary Macgregor will die horribly in a hotel fire running back and forth from one set of flames to another until she falls down and dies, and then proceed with a story of the abuse heaped upon Mary by her classmates and teacher in what were to be the best years of Mary’s short life. As we read the novel and consider Miss Brodie and her realm of influence, Spark continuously throws us way down the road to see where the girls are and what their recollections of Miss Brodie are. Eunice, the sporty girl, will later marry and visit Miss Brodie’s grave on a trip to Edinburgh, but it is made clear from her conversation with her husband that she has not talked of Miss Brodie throughout the whole of their marriage. So even as Miss Brodie declares, “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life,” we are let in on the fact that these girls will not be hers for life. All this movement allows Spark to tell her story and keep us as readers unsettled about what it all means. Miss Brodie is neither hero nor villain, neither culprit nor victim. Or she is both and all.
Similarly, Sandy, the girl whose story this is as much as it is Miss Brodie’s, is a difficult to place character. On the one hand, her flights of fancy in which she has conversations with fictional characters and fictionalizes the lives of people around her is completely winning. On the other hand, her hardening as she sees through Miss Brodie’s plans and understands her to be a flawed human can be painful to behold. In a lot of ways, this is the story of a girl who leaves the childish world, where adults are heroic and brave, and enters adulthood, where she comes to learn that everyone is messed up and selfish and flawed. She gains the knowledge of weakness before she has the experience of her own weakness to allow her to feel compassion for the struggles of her erstwhile heroes. At one point, Miss Brodie talks about her long-ago forefather, Willie Brodie, “a man of substance, a cabinet maker and designer of gibbets” who “died cheerfully on a gibbet of his own devising.” It is clear that Sandy is the gibbet of Miss Brodie’s own devising, the insightful girl she instructed and led to the point that Sandy gave the headmistress the ammunition she needed to fire Miss Brodie with this explanation: “I’m not really interested in world affairs . . . only in putting a stop to Miss Brodie.”
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is funny and heartbreaking and thought-provoking and a blast to read. It is intellectual and emotional. It is simple in its thrust and complicated in its content. It is one of those books I wanted to fly through and crawl through at the same time because I didn’t want it to end.
I don't really know what to make of this. Maybe I should dwell on it for a while, but upon finishing this book, it's hard to tell if there's a great theme that went over my head, or if this is just kind of a big nothing.
The story itself is good, and the novel is short and economical (although the constant shifts in chronology, often mid-paragraph, can be jarring), so it has that going for it. And the character of Jean Brodie is great. I just wonder if I missed something here besides "fascism is bad."
The story itself is good, and the novel is short and economical (although the constant shifts in chronology, often mid-paragraph, can be jarring), so it has that going for it. And the character of Jean Brodie is great. I just wonder if I missed something here besides "fascism is bad."
A quick easy read that is repetitive and a bit obvious. I preferred the Children’s Hour along a similar vein.
Sharp and brilliant writing, will seek out more Spark.
Strange book, strange protagonist. Weird message about fascism. I guess didn't get it.
In Edinburgh in the 1930s, there is a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime. She teaches Junior school and has a habit of choosing certain of her pupils to take under her wing. This “Brodie set” consists of six girls: Sandy, Rose, Mary, Jenny, Monica, and Eunice, plus a seventh girl, Joyce Emily, who isn’t part of the set but who plays a role anyway. As the girls leave Junior school for Senior, they continue to be influenced by Miss Brodie by way of regular meetups at her home. By the time the girls are sixteen, she has chosen Sandy as her confidante and becomes obsessed with the idea of having an affair with Mr Lloyd, the married art teacher, while actually having an affair with Mr Lowther, the unmarried music teacher. The novel, told largely in flashforwards, tells us from the beginning that one of the Brodie set is going to “betray” Miss Brodie and have her fired from teaching, and it is the who, how, and why of this on which the non-sequential narration focuses.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a very short novel: the edition I have is only 150 pages. However, in those few pages, Spark manages to fit a remarkable amount of character. Jean Brodie herself is quite a complicated woman. She is not, however, very sympathetic: she is openly fascist and her exploits at the Marcia Blaine school lead to the destruction of more than one girl’s life. Miss Brodie has a romanticized idea of the world- as Sandy notes, “She thinks she is Providence … She thinks she is the God of Calvin, the beginning and the End”- and it is this that ultimately proves her own downfall as she is betrayed by one of her own set.
As I mentioned, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a very short book, perfect for a day or weekend read. Due to its length and readability, I’d recommend it for someone looking to get into classics or literary fiction or just looking for a nice character-driven novel with a bit of a mystery.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a very short novel: the edition I have is only 150 pages. However, in those few pages, Spark manages to fit a remarkable amount of character. Jean Brodie herself is quite a complicated woman. She is not, however, very sympathetic: she is openly fascist and her exploits at the Marcia Blaine school lead to the destruction of more than one girl’s life. Miss Brodie has a romanticized idea of the world- as Sandy notes, “She thinks she is Providence … She thinks she is the God of Calvin, the beginning and the End”- and it is this that ultimately proves her own downfall as she is betrayed by one of her own set.
As I mentioned, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a very short book, perfect for a day or weekend read. Due to its length and readability, I’d recommend it for someone looking to get into classics or literary fiction or just looking for a nice character-driven novel with a bit of a mystery.