Ninety-Nine Novels: Two Novels by Muriel Spark

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, Andrew Biswell of the Burgess Foundation speaks to writer and editor Alan Taylor about two novels by Muriel Spark: The Girls of Slender Means and The Mandelbaum Gate.
Born in 1918, Muriel Spark was a novelist, poet, essayist and biographer. Her novels are celebrated as pioneering works of postmodernism and she was twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is best known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brody, which was adapted for the screen in 1969. She lived in Edinburgh, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), New York, Rome, and latterly in Tuscany, where she died in 2006.
Alan Taylor is the author of Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark. In 2018, he was the series editor of Spark’s Collected Novels, published by Polygon to celebrate her centenary. He was the founding editor of the Scottish Review of Books and the Managing Editor of the Scotsman. He is a long-standing member of the Scottish team on BBC Radio 4’s Round Britain Quiz. Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman, edited by Alan Taylor, is out now.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Muriel Spark:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
Loitering with Intent (1981)
By others:
Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1606)
The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens (Anonymous, 1765)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1867)
The Wreck of the Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)
Tremor of Intent by Anthony Burgess (1966)
The Clockwork Testament by Anthony Burgess (1974)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré (1974)
A Perfect Spy by John Le Carré (1986)
Muriel Spark: The Biography by Martin Stannard (2009)
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LINKS
Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries, edited by Alan Taylor (Canongate): canongate.co.u...
The Complete Muriel Spark at Polygon: birlinn.co.uk/...
Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark by Alan Taylor (Polygon): birlinn.co.uk/...
The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Best Diarists, edited by Irene and Alan Taylor (Canongate): bit.ly/Assassi...
International Anthony Burgess Foundation: www.anthonybur...
The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective: nodicecollecti...
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[@brettsidaway2691]

I would urge anyone - not just Muriel Spark fans - interested in the novel - as art form, as social critique - to listen to this podcast and the rest of the series. This one is exemplary - two articulate experts in conversation, bringing out the many layers of both works, contextualising them and sharing their obvious enthusiasm for the novels and Spark's oeuvre as a whole. And if the result is getting you (re)read the works then job done. Like many of my generation, watching the film of '...Jean Brodie' lead me to the novels, and 'Spark-ed' (sorry) a life long interest. I'm too scared to say how long ago I read 'The Girls of Slender Means' but still remember its impact - so much wit, so much intelligence, so much emotion in such a slim volume. When I was reading about Spark's novels 'Mandelbaum Gate' was always classed as 'a failure' so I put off reading it probably until about a decade ago. It is certainly no failure - different in some aspects from other Spark novels (not only its length) but typical in its ability to tackle serious philosophical/ theological /ethical issues in a seemingly light-touch style. 'Girls...' is a good place to start for new readers, I think.