The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: A Novel (P.S.)
by Muriel Spark
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Book Summary Information
Author: Muriel SparkEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-02-10
ISBN: 0061711292
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Book Reviews of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: A Novel (P.S.)
Book Review: Compact, complex, tragicomic, philosphical
Summary: 4 Stars
Tragic, because the more the main character Sandy tries to avoid her fate, the more she creates it for herself. Comic, because the writer's matter-of-fact style highlights some of life's simple ironies.
The title character of this book is Miss Jean Brodie, teacher at a private girls' school. Miss Brodie is "larger than life," or so she presents herself. Though in the view of the author, Miss Brodie is very much a product of her time, Miss Brodie sees herself as transcendent. Miss Brodie's evolving, imaginative narrative of her own life is the main topic that her students study. Her narrative dominates her vision, and often she cannot see interpersonal or political events as they really are. We see Miss Brodie through the eyes of Sandy, one of her favourite students. Sandy, too, spins imaginative narratives in which she is the hero, using raw material from books, stories, and Miss Brodie's life. When Sandy reaches maturity, she finds she must distance herself from the mentor she too closely resembles. And yet, the more Sandy imagines she has rejected Miss Brodie, the more Sandy's life parallels Miss Brodie's life.
Philosophically, the book is a meditation on predestination. Spark mentions, almost in passing, the Calvinistic view that how you live your life has no bearing on the eternal future God chooses for you. She regularly interrupts the narrative with a glimpse of the future of one of the characters. Often there seems to be no connection between the little girls we are getting to know and the adult women they become. This in itself is a parody of the randomness of the theory of predestination. But the real irony of the theory is played out in Sandy's life. On the one hand, Sandy's dreamy, self-absorbed personality seems a carbon copy of Miss Brodie's. On the other hand, Sandy finds Miss Brodie ridiculous. Sandy tries hard to make choices that reject Miss Brodie's influence. But they all backfire, and the themes that drive Sandy's life - vicarious love and confused renunciation - parallel Miss Brodie's anyway.
Sparks writes in a deceptively simple style. She tosses us into the middle of a scene, and describes small awkward moments that capture big themes. The awkward moments make all of the characters look slightly ridiculous. Because we recognize the moments, we take a second look at our own ordinariness, and the deceptive games hidden within it. As the book opens up our perception, we might laugh at ourselves or pity others we know. We're led to ask whether we can really escape some of life's ironies, or whether we are...predestined.
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