Serious but not solemn

Towards the end of the Seventies I was asked to write a short, critical study of Muriel Spark’s novels. I accepted, with some trepidation and misgivings. At least I hope there were misgivings. There should have been, first because nothing equipped me for the task apart from my admiration for her novels and, perhaps, the fact that I had, at long last and after many false starts, written a novel myself and had it published.

The second reason to hesitate was more cogent. I had enjoyed her novels from the start. Memento Mori and The Bachelors were as clever and witty and as much fun as pre-Brideshead Waugh; they delighted us as undergraduates. Yet the question nagged: how serious was she? Difficult, I thought, to write a ‘New Assessment’ (this being the title of the series to which my little book would belong) of a writer whose ‘seriousness’ was in doubt.