Dame Muriel Spark: Author

I see Mureil Spark passed away at the age of 88 in Tuscany where she had been living for about 30 years. I enjoyed pretty much everything she wrote, particularly "The Girls of Slender Means", "Mememto Mori", "The Mandelbaum Gate", and of course, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie"...who will ever forget Maggie Smith playing the school mistress!

I see in the obit that she produced respected biographical and critical work about the Bronte family. Also that "The Girls..." drew on her experience as a young woman struggling to make ends meet while writing in London. Apparently she was almost starving until novelist Graham Greene gave her a monthy allowance and some wine on condition she did not thank him or pray for him.

BTW, Jim's edition of Graham Greene's "No Man's Land" has been published and is available in bookstores and the library has two copies. This is a story which was written to be made into a film but never was. It has been published but buried in an obscure anthology of Greene filmscripts. The edition also includes another very interesting story called "The Stranger's Hand". Worth a look for Graham Greene fans and David Lodge fans as he did the forward to the edition.