A Far Cry from Kensington

Muriel Spark's A Far Cry From Kensington (1988) is the bookend companion to her 1981 classic, Loitering With Intent. Both novels share a common theme, and like the earlier novel, A Far Cry From Kensington is largely autobiographical and takes place in virtually the same setting and time period: the literary world of early Fifties London. Both are explorations, via reminiscence, of the banality of everyday evil, taking place among the workaday, routine lives of the lower middle class. Less scathing if no less hilarious than many of its predecessors, the relatively unsung A Far Cry From Kensington is the most realistic and humane novel among the twenty-odd Spark has written. It is also exceptional in that it is the single Spark fiction in which a love affair blossoms into a successful relationship of duration. The story of the universally respected though immensely overweight Mrs. Hawkins, A Far Cry From Kensington follows two divergent threads in her daily life: the mounting sufferings of a rooming house neighbor who is being anonymously threatened, and the problems that stem from her own continuous encounters with Hector Bartlett, a manipulative sycophant who hopes to use her footholds in the publishing world to advance his nonexistent literary career. While Loitering With Intent can be read as something of a tactical combat manual, A Far Cry From Kensington is instructive in the art of deduction: caught up in a spiraling series of mysterious and increasingly serious coincidences, Mrs. Hawkins, short of both hard facts and physical evidence, actively unravels the odd events that are taking a toll on both the lives of her friends and her editorial career. Fully realizing she is as prone to misjudgment as anyone, Mrs. Hawkins, utilizing her intelligence, intuition, and instinct, nonetheless proceeds confidently and assertively to pierce the veil of secrecy and quiet conspiracy engulfing her. Spark is at a creative peak as she reveals the subtle turns, nuances, and moment to moment impressions in Mrs. Hawkins' mind as she forms her cautious conclusions. Unlike Spark's finest novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), in which a significant portion of the mystery of human existence is shown to exist on a partially transcendent level, A Far Cry From Kensington eventually grounds that mystery in the knowable everyday. Though the author was to return to something of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie's vision in Symposium (1990), here she seems to be expressing that at least the mundane truths of human life can be ascertained by diligence of method, applied intelligence, and a fundamental willingness to be believe that some people are unabashedly predatory, unscrupulous, and ethically coarse at best. Another message of the novel is that the weak, the foolish, and the vacuous are among the most potentially dangerous individuals one can become involved with. Upon its release, a number of critics publicly objected with pointed distaste to some of Mrs.

This is one of those books that cannot described in a nutshell. If you had to hazard a guess at a description, you'd have to place it firmly in the comedy/ tragedy/ drama/ mystery/ romance section, or simply file it under Spark: Muriel in the Classics section. Narrated by the once round and central character, Agnes Hawkins (a.k.a. Mrs. Hawkins or Nancy), the story revolves around her experiences as a young widow living in furnished rooms in a semi-detached building in South Kensington. She colorfully describes her neighbors and acquaintances, and gives us tantalizing glimpses into their little secret worlds, in which she is a trustee and confidante. Despite the mysterious black boxes and the lurking threat of enemies, known and unknown, our heroine manages to keep her head above water, remains a pillar of strength and finds true love among the rubble. Thanks to her diet plan (freely given to the reader as a bonus for purchasing the book), she gains new self-respect, and reinvents herself in a new country, a far cry from her humble beginnings. A simple classic by an inspired writer. Amanda Richards

Muriel Spark is a writer's writer. Don't miss this quirky book with unforgettable characters that come together in a boarding house in odd and touching ways.By turns hilarious, witty, sarcastic, and wryly endearing, it's a masterpiece.

This was my first Muriel Spark. There will be others. For A FAR CRY FROM KENSINGTON is wonderful prose. This is what I would call a quietly funny book that falls within a long line of English women writers with uncanny means of observation, particularly for the odd and unpredictable little things of daily life. If you enjoy the works of Barbara Pym, Bernice Rubens, Penelope Lively among others, Muriel Spark is also for you. In addition this book permits an interesting reminescense of life in London in the years immediately after WWII, without the traps of emotional nostalgia. This is a distant and yet warm view of the time. A cool book!

This is my favorite book by a wonderful writer. It's also, I feel, her most personal book; in a way, it's more personal than her autobiography. It's a memoir, written thirty years after the events described. The narrator, Nancy (at the beginning of the book, when she's obese, other people address her as Mrs. Hawkins. Later, after she loses a lot of weight, she becomes Nancy to them ) is a young widow wholives in a rooming-house in the lower-class suburb of Kensington. Among the other roomers is a Polish immigrant dressmaker, a displaced person, whose personal fate is connected with Nancy's. Although Nancy doesn't realize it at the time, she is herself a displaced person: rootless, alone in the world, with no strong attachments, and given to dreaming her days away riding buses all day whenever she's out of work. She works as an editor, first for a publishing company that publishes good books but is going bankrupt; then for a publishing firm that's run by some vey eccentric characters who don't even read books, but is very successful financially; and finally, for an arty magazine. Into Nancy's life comes a real villain: Hector Bartlett. He's madly ambitious for a writing career, but has absolutely no talent, and, except for when he's plotting revenge, is quite stupid. He manages to attach himself, leech-like, to a famous woman novelist. He also tries to get Nancy to "use her influence" to introduce him to her boss. Irritated by his persistent sycophancy, his lack of talent and general smarminess, one day she insults him. She calls him a pisseur de copie. He goes berserk with rage, and puts in motion a devious scheme to get even with her. His revenge is so petty that it would be laughable, except for the fact that it ends in real tragedy for one of the other characters. Nancy, however, refuses to be a victim. To say more would be to give away the ending. This being a Muriel Spark book, there's a strong undercurrent of the supernatural throughout. Is the pisseur de copie really a diabolical agent, or jus a vicious human being? (Myrna Loy once told Samuel Goldwyn that she ddn't want to work with director William Wyler because she'd heard he was a sadist. "No, he's not," Goldwyn replied. "He's just a very mean fellow!") As always, she leaves it for the reader to decide. There's also some good, clean, dirty fun for the reader: trying to identify the reprehensible woman novelist (she tries, quite determinedly, and with malice aforethought, to pry the pisseur leech off herself and attach him to Nancy. When Nancy refuses to capitulate, the novelist has Nancy fired from two jobs.) I won't name my candidate, even though she went on to her reward