womens fiction

I enjoyed this book - as I do all of Muriel Spark's books. Her writing is unique and intriguing and always thought provoking. Miss Jean Brodie is in the prime of her life but it slips away as she is removed from her vocation as a teacher. This book asks an important question of each of our lives: do we have *A* prime? do we really recognize it when it comes? are we bitter when we realize it has passed? or is it the bitterness of betrayal that tragically steals our prime from beneath us. This book is present on many "classic" fiction lists and it is for good reason. A seemingly simple story, but very far reaching. Just as Miss Jean Brodie's efforts as an unorthodox teacher reach her students in profound ways, this book can ask simple questions of the reader and reach into their souls as well.

Students who are forced to read this slender but pithy novel in high school or university classes often dismiss it was being 'about nothing', or just a dead bore. Which is a shame, as this powerful novel from Muriel Spark is one that needs to be appreciated and taken seriously - and enjoyed - by all readers, whether those in high school or those who lecture on it to classrooms of bored university students. Perhaps the lack of appreciation for this novel by students is the lack of interest with which teachers approach it. Perhaps it hits too close to the bone for many teachers, who, like Miss Brodie, endeavour to shape and form their 'set' and who, perhaps unwittingly, manipulate their students in the worst ways.

Whatever the reason, this text is one that should be read and taught ethusiastically, for it packs into its 150-odd pages a deeply comic yet troubling bunch of themes: betrayal, fitting-in, the power of imagination, adultery, and most importantly, the transfiguration of the commonplace. In a way the book is at the same time a paeon to and a curse of the imagination, demonstrating how it can enrich life (such as in the antics of Sandy and Jenny) yet also how it can damage others (such as Miss Brodie's false and manipulative ideas about love, sex, Teddy, Rose and so forth).

Muriel Spark writes about things she knows well, in this case teaching, Edinburgh, girls schools, sex and betrayal. A book not only worth reading, but well worth teaching, and an excellent introduction to the works of Spark, whose other works are equally compelling and astute.

This clever satire is unforgettable--if you get into it and let it work its magic. Miss Brodie is not to be taken at face value; the members of her "set" start out admiring her and then gradually find out her dark side as they come of age, move away from her, and even turn against her and betray her--and we can understand why.