Muriel Spark in prime form: one of her most enjoyable, complex, and
instructive jeux d'esprit. "How
wonderful to be an artist and a woman in the
twentieth century," Fleur Talbot
rejoices Happily loitering about London, c. 1949, with intent to gather
material for her writing, Fleur finds a job "on the grubby edge of the literary world," as secretary to the peculiar Autobiographial Association. Mad egomaniacs, hilariously writing their memoirs in advance—or poor fools ensnared by a blackmailer? Rich material, in any case. But when its pompous director, Sir Quentin Oliver, steals the manuscript of Fleur's new novel, fiction begins to appropriate life. The association's members begin to act out scenes exactly as Fleur herself has already written them in her missing manuscript. And as they meet darkly funny, pre-visioned fates, where does art start or reality end? "A delicious conundrum,"
The New Statesman called
Loitering with Intent..
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