'A wholly original presence in modern literature' Andrew Motion
'My admiration for Spark's contribution to world literature knows no bounds. She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent - the creme de la creme' Ian Rankin
'One of this [20th] century's finest creators of the comic-metaphysical entertainment' New York Times
'Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards, decisive as a smashed glass is decisive' John Updike, New Yorker
'She can be compared to Evelyn Waugh . . . but there's Chekhov here, and a tincture of Stevie Smith . . . polished . . . individual . . . exacting' Daily Telegraph
'Spark is a natural, a paradigm of that rare sort of artist from whom work of the highest quality flows as elementally as current through a circuit: hook her to a pen and the juice purls out of her' New Yorker
'It is perhaps her short stories that demonstrate her gifts best: wit, perception, acute characterisation, elegance and precision. They mark her out as one of the finest writers of her generation' Observer
'Muriel Spark has made herself a mistress at writing stories which seem to trip blithely and bitchily along life's way until the reader is suddenly pulled up with a shock recognition of death and judgment, heaven and hell' London Review of Books
'All [the stories] are hallmarked with those instantly identifiable Sparkian qualities; brevity, detachment and a sly, sinister wit' Literary Review
'Dullness is as alien to her as inelegance' New Statesman and Society
CONTENTS
Introduction by Janice Galloway
The Curtain Blown by the Breeze
The Young Man Who Discovered the Secret of Life
The Playhouse Called Remarkable
‘A Sad Tale’s Best for Winter’
The Thing About Police Stations
A Hundred and Eleven Years Without a Chauffeur
THE SMALLER BIGGER PICTURE
by Janice Galloway
They are my own secret rules but they arise from deep conviction. They cannot be formulated, they are as sincere and indescribable as are the primary colours; they are not of a science, but of an art.
The voice of Lucy, ‘The Fortune Teller’, Muriel Spark
I met Mrs Spark for the first time in specious surroundings. The place was a television studio where a pilot chat show in the guise of a dinner party hosted by the comedienne Ruby Wax was about to be filmed. I was