All the Stories of Muriel Spark

All The Stories of Muriel Spark (2000) is the latest edition of novelist's short fiction; four stories have been added since the book was released as Open to the Public: New & Collected Stories in 1997. The new edition is fully warranted, as Spark remains one of the greatest short story writers in English of her time, a fact rarely acknowledged in the literary world. Best known as the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) and typically designated in the press over the decades as 'the Catholic novelist' or 'the Scottish novelist,' Spark is in fact, above all, a Gnostic writer of the first order. Throughout her twenty-three novels and other works, which include drama, radio plays, criticism, autobiography, poetry, and a story for children, Spark's elegant, kinetic work--whether through first person or omniscient narrative--is guided and revealed by intuitive but accurate sudden flashes of insight and perception which reveal the fundamental truth behind appearances. Spark has said that she "doesn't go in for motives," and neither has she gone in for standard, consensus-reality 'rational' explanations. For Spark, human life and reality itself are infinitely strange and mysterious, blanketed in a perpetual "cloud of unknowing" through which keen human intelligence, however, if rightfully applied, can often successfully penetrate. In the guise of the 'supernatural,' the mysterious plays an appropriately substantial role in Spark's short fiction. 'The Portabello Road,' 'The Leaf-Sweeper,' 'The Executor,' 'Another Pair of Hands,' and 'The Girl I Left Behind Me' are ghost stories of a kind, but certainly not horror stories in the grand British tradition of M. R. James. Arthur Machen, and Algernon Blackwood. 'The Seraph and the Zambesi' features of the unexpected arrival of a grotesque angel at an African Nativity play, while the title character in 'Miss Pinkerton's Apocalypse' is beset by a flying 'saucer'--the kind used at tea time--in her home. Weirdly toying with the literal and the figurative, Spark allows the guardian 'personal assistant' in 'The Dragon' to begin breathing actual fire to demonstrate her essential nature. But Spark never relies on the paranormal as a crutch: 'Bang-Bang You're Dead,' 'The Twins,' 'The Pawnbroker's Wife,' 'The Ormolu Clock,' the grim 'The Dark Glasses,' and 'A Member of the Family' seamlessly reveal Spark's acute psychological understanding of the human condition. 'Come Along, Marjorie' brilliantly examines the role of faith and gnostic insight when juxtaposed with mass belief and crowd mentality, and 'The Black Madonna,' among the very best of Spark's short work, hilariously exposes the hypocrisy often inherent in progressive Protestantism. Young African citizen Daphne in 'The Go-Away Bird' finds the long-dreamt of realities of life in England to be far more precarious than playing the role of sacrificial pawn for her unsound guardians in her native country, while a manipulative power broker gets

Along with William Trevor and Penelope Lively, Muriel Spark is a master storyteller. Though she is best known for her novels (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), these stories make for lovely reading. I would take this book to the beach, on a plane or just to bed. Spark is a wondrous companion---you'll laugh aloud constantly.