Do You like book A Far Cry From Kensington (2000)?
3.5 starsHere's what New York Times' reviewer Michiko Kakutani wrote about the author: Here is the recipe for a typical Muriel Spark novel: take a self-enclosed community (of writers, schoolgirls, nuns, rich people, etc.) that is full of incestuous liaisons and fraternal intrigue; toss in a bombshell (like murder, suicide or betrayal) that will richochet dangerously around this little world, and add some allusions to the supernatural to ground these melodramatics in an old-fashioned context of good and evil. Serve up with crisp, authoritative prose and present with a light and heartless hand.I don't know, but while accurate on the whole there seems something contradictory about this summation. I think it's the clash between "melodramatics" and "crisp, authoritative prose." The heartlessness is still here in this late novel (1988) but what once seemed outrageous no longer does. Therefore I'm less enthusiastic for A Far Cry from Kensington that I was for earlier Spark novels, especially Memento Mori and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie--both 5-star masterpieces. Recommended with reservations.
—William1
Have just re-read it and have found it to be as witty and interesting as previously. A whole host of tongue in cheek observations and clever asides from the heroine, Mrs Hawkins, as she recalls a six month period in her life moving from job to job as a result of her unpreparedness to stop speaking the truth about one particularly obnoxious individual. This ' pisseur de copie ' Hector Bartlett slimes his way through the story but it is his very grossness which is an aspect that rankles. Why did Emma Loy, the sophisticated writer, take up with him in the first place? He is not handsome, nor witty, not intelligent nor inspiring. I still cannot see and Muriel Spark falters slightly here why Bartlett is involved with Loy at all. It is maybe a little unconvincing. Having said that the story moves along well and you are enabled, through gently outlined characterizations and enticing glimpses of future incidents, to be kept wanting to find more. I love Spark's use of this device whereby future incidents are referred to in the present so that they hang either like a sword of Damocles or as a light at the end of a tunnel. Both uses flesh out the expectation. There is humour, tragedy, sinister shadows and burgeoning romance and mixed in with all there are some great characters and wonderful one-liners.
—Mark
Set in 1950s London, 'A Far Cry from Kensington' is a social drama as related by Mrs Hawkins who lives in a large rooming house, not surprisingly in Kensington, with a variety of other lodgers.She works in publishing, which gives the book that little extra interest, while the other lodgers are a disparate bunch of oddities, whose very moves cause chaos, heartache, stress and distress. Mrs Hawkins handles it all with aplomb while going about her daily business.That daily business is interrupted a few times as she is obliged to change jobs and eventually she settles down with a young man in a flat in Highgate, where she lands up in an editorial role for a literary magazine.Witty, preceptive of character and engagingly readable 'A Far Cry from Kensington' also captures the ambience of 1950s London very nicely. And one most amusing incident in the book is when Mrs Hawkins (christened Agnes but calling herself Nancy - that is when her forename is used) calls Hector Bartlett, who was having an affair with a famous novelist, a 'pisseur do copie', meaning he is a producer of hack writing. This causes her all sorts of problems, and on one occasion costs her her job, but she continues to call him thus right to the very end by which time she is, indeed, a far cry from Kensington!
—Gerry
