A review by lelia_t
Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark

5.0

An absolute delight. I loved Fleur Talbot’s enthusiasm and the way Spark explores how art informs life and life informs art. I had to remind myself that we’re encountering layers of fiction inside of fiction and what Fleur says of her character Warrender Chase is true of her, as well: both are “only some hundreds of words, some punctuation, sentences, paragraphs, marks on the page.” What an amazing thing, to create fully realized characters from a few marks on a page. I think that’s what makes this book so engaging, Fleur seems like a real person with an infectious zest for her work as a writer. Even as Fleur is experiencing life and exploring her creative voice, she’s fine-tuning her own character, and being influenced by other people’s writings. The effect is to create a page-turner out of what seems, when I try to describe it, quite dull. It’s not dull at all and the whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking how fun rereading this book will be.

_____

I just read this a second time after reading Martin Stannard’s biography of Muriel Spark and find the novel is as wonderful as it was on the first read-through, but now I can see how this was a victory song for Muriel Spark. She’s celebrating the self that won through all the doubts others had about her abilities, the damaging effect of relationships with men who weren’t right for her, her own issues with Dexedrine. Her own path to finding her voice may have been difficult and long, but she’s celebrating her resilience in the remarkable Fleur Talbot.