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carduelia_carduelis 's review for:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
by Muriel Spark
Another review that feels like it needs to be prepended with disclaimers given this book's overwhelming popularity.
After having read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie I ended up looking through a couple of pages of the 4/5 star reviews to try and understand what I'd missed out on, what other people got from this book that I didn’t. It seems that many people who liked this book had seen the Maggie Smith adaption of it first, so possibly I was missing something from not having seen the film?
But what the majority enjoyed about this novel is what drove me crazy, starting with the central character herself.
Jean Brodie is a highly functioning sociopath. She manipulates the children in her care to sculpt their sense of self, self-worth, and grooms a couple of them for revenge/replacement sex. And the bullying! Every interaction with Mary made me cringe.
How is this woman heralded as an anti-hero in modern fiction?
I’ve seen a couple of arguments that this book was very progressive for its time and that Brodie is a revolutionary character. This was written in the 60’s, this style, these characters are NOT progressive.
Brodie is about as likable as Holden Caulfield but with none of the youth to excuse her behavior. But a character doesn’t have to be likable for a book to be enjoyable, so putting Brodie aside as a character, what of the children (and eventually youths) that form the Brodie set? Despite Spark repeatedly ramming their ‘defining’ characteristics down our throats, they all merge into one another: bland, impressionable children. Sandy, the more fleshed out character of the bunch, does however entertain with her daydreams and fictional accounts of Brodie’s private life. These occasional paragraphs are the best bits of the novel.
The use of repetition is interesting for the first 2-3 pages. For me, at least, the girls being ‘known’ for something was part of Brodie’s influence: if you tell a child they’re stupid every day for 3 years, they’ll likely end up thinking they’re stupid. It would have been interesting to compare what the girls could have been known for before Brodie’s influence to what they did become known for after all.
After those first couple of pages though, the repetition starts feeling like filler. Were this a weekly installment it could be justified but with a novel this brief and lacking in content these repetitions stick out.
The repetitions of 'Brodie in her prime’ is aggravating beyond belief. By page 10 I did not care about Brodie anymore. Can you imagine if this central character were a man in a mid-life crisis? Is this still a ‘charming’ story with the gender swapped? urgh
The final thing that other reviewers seemed to enjoy so much was the flash-forward glimpses of the girl’s futures. Again, this felt like a device to break up the lack of story.
So I suppose after writing this review I have almost nothing positive to say about The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I need a novel to deliver something to me, one of either: a rich character, interesting character dynamics, a good setting, a good plot. If these is none of these, I can’t but give it a 1 star. Sad I this turned out to be such a dud as I love books in a school setting. So it goes, so it goes.
After having read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie I ended up looking through a couple of pages of the 4/5 star reviews to try and understand what I'd missed out on, what other people got from this book that I didn’t. It seems that many people who liked this book had seen the Maggie Smith adaption of it first, so possibly I was missing something from not having seen the film?
But what the majority enjoyed about this novel is what drove me crazy, starting with the central character herself.
Jean Brodie is a highly functioning sociopath. She manipulates the children in her care to sculpt their sense of self, self-worth, and grooms a couple of them for revenge/replacement sex. And the bullying! Every interaction with Mary made me cringe.
How is this woman heralded as an anti-hero in modern fiction?
I’ve seen a couple of arguments that this book was very progressive for its time and that Brodie is a revolutionary character. This was written in the 60’s, this style, these characters are NOT progressive.
Brodie is about as likable as Holden Caulfield but with none of the youth to excuse her behavior. But a character doesn’t have to be likable for a book to be enjoyable, so putting Brodie aside as a character, what of the children (and eventually youths) that form the Brodie set? Despite Spark repeatedly ramming their ‘defining’ characteristics down our throats, they all merge into one another: bland, impressionable children. Sandy, the more fleshed out character of the bunch, does however entertain with her daydreams and fictional accounts of Brodie’s private life. These occasional paragraphs are the best bits of the novel.
The use of repetition is interesting for the first 2-3 pages. For me, at least, the girls being ‘known’ for something was part of Brodie’s influence: if you tell a child they’re stupid every day for 3 years, they’ll likely end up thinking they’re stupid. It would have been interesting to compare what the girls could have been known for before Brodie’s influence to what they did become known for after all.
After those first couple of pages though, the repetition starts feeling like filler. Were this a weekly installment it could be justified but with a novel this brief and lacking in content these repetitions stick out.
The repetitions of 'Brodie in her prime’ is aggravating beyond belief. By page 10 I did not care about Brodie anymore. Can you imagine if this central character were a man in a mid-life crisis? Is this still a ‘charming’ story with the gender swapped? urgh
The final thing that other reviewers seemed to enjoy so much was the flash-forward glimpses of the girl’s futures. Again, this felt like a device to break up the lack of story.
So I suppose after writing this review I have almost nothing positive to say about The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I need a novel to deliver something to me, one of either: a rich character, interesting character dynamics, a good setting, a good plot. If these is none of these, I can’t but give it a 1 star. Sad I this turned out to be such a dud as I love books in a school setting. So it goes, so it goes.