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A review by matthewcpeck
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
3.0
Muriel Spark is often named as a spiritual ancestor to a number of my favorite writers, so I gravitated towards her iconic book. "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" is a short novel about a group of students at an upscale girls' school in 1930s Edinburgh, and the impact of the titular instructor. The unmarried and determinedly nonconformist Miss Brodie is my favorite sort of fictional character; a lover of art, female empowerment, and Mussolini, she's not easy to love or easy to despise.
I quite enjoyed Spark's style, with its cold, acidic humor and casual disregard for standard storytelling. Plot bombshells are less foreshadowed then matter-of-factly dropped in your lap, as time bounces between past and future. But I found it kind of inert and less than compelling, at least until the final quarter. Even at 129 pages, the middle is a bit of a slog. As much I admire the bite of Spark's writing, this felt more like an inflated short story than a compact novel.
I quite enjoyed Spark's style, with its cold, acidic humor and casual disregard for standard storytelling. Plot bombshells are less foreshadowed then matter-of-factly dropped in your lap, as time bounces between past and future. But I found it kind of inert and less than compelling, at least until the final quarter. Even at 129 pages, the middle is a bit of a slog. As much I admire the bite of Spark's writing, this felt more like an inflated short story than a compact novel.