Loitering with Intent is a delightful, effervescent sort of story, but hard to put your finger on. For one thing, (and here I'm generalizing on the basis of just two of her books) Spark is at once an extremely exacting author--with sharp observations about characters and situations and a really well-defined sense of narrative and prose rhythms--while also seeming to be a rather carefree one. She reuses phrases that catch her fancy to excess (the "English Rose" designation gets really tired out in Loitering) and seems to have no interest in maintaining narrative suspense, but rather drops in summary paragraphs mid-way through the book which reveal how everything is going to turn out in the end. (I actually rather like the latter quality, being a big skip-to-the-end-so-I-can-see-if-I-guessed-right sort of reader, myself, but it's unusual for an author, to be sure.) Loitering also flirts a little bit with po-mo narrative tropes without ever really following through on them (which I also appreciate). Fleur, the struggling but lighthearted author-heroine of the story, finds that after taking a job as a secretary of a private Autobiographical Association, the people she meets and the events of her life begin more and more to resemble things that she's written in her novel. For much of the book, she maintains that any similarity between her life and her art is coincidental, until finally demurring, "...even if I had invented the characters after, not before, I had gone to work at Sir Quentin's--even if I had been moved to portray those poor people in fictional form, they would not have been recognizable, even to themselves...Such as I am, I'm an artist, not a reporter." Nevertheless, this overlap complicates things: Fleur's book is stolen by her employer who begins quoting lines to her that her characters have said. He steals passages and writes them into the memoirs of his association members, as well as using her as a character in the invented sordid affairs that he includes in these "biographies" as well. In a late scene, Fleur's employer tricks her in the same way that a character in her novel is tricked, and although she has an inkling of the connection, she doesn't believe it: "It seemed quite unlikely that my own novel could be entering into my life to such an extent."Overall, however, what's actually unusual about Loitering with Intent is how much fun it is. A lot happens--a lot of dramatic, heavy sorts of events and twists which in the hands of another author could have taken on an entirely different tone. Try out this summary: In the wake of World War II, a young, single, impoverished female author writes a promising novel, only to have it stolen by her devious employer who tries to use its very words and plot against her and ruin her chances at success. It sounds grim, right? But it's not. Spark makes this story an adventure, and even tells the reader intermittently that the bad guy is going to get what he deserves, that the heroine will triumph, and that above all, there will be joy. "What a wonderful thing it was to be a woman and an artist in the twentieth century," Fleur notes several times, even in the midst of all her troubles. It's all just so exciting to her: "I do dearly love a turn of events." But if there's any one quote that will really give you the take-away of this book, it's Fleur's own catchphrase: "I go on my way rejoicing." And so might we all.
While this novel's plot isn't anything to write home about, there are two entertaining aspects that impel the reader: the narrator, Fleur Talbot, writes with a wonderfully understated British humor; and the novel works out a finely concealed meta-fictional stance. The latter comes from the melding of the narrator's forthcoming first novel entitled Warrender Chase with her new job as secretary for a group called the Autobiographical Society, a scam led by the nefarious Sir Quentin Oliver. While the plot meanders, there is a good deal of action and intrigue: stolen manuscripts, shuffling lovers, faces in windows, plagiarized writing. And Sparks' own writing teems with pleasant wonders: "He was a man of huge bulk, with a great Semitic head, a sculptor's joy." or, "Well, what I found common to Sir Quentin's remaining group was their weakness of character. To my mind this is no more to be despised than is physical weakness. We are not all born heroes and athletes. At the same time, it is elementary wisdom to fear weaknesses, including one's own. . . ." There are also some wonderful barbs against a true Roman Catholic believer. Near the end, the narrator breathes a sigh of relief when the believer makes the "dramatic announcements that she had lost her faith." For, as the narrator reasons, "I was rather relieved since I had always uneasily felt that if her faith was true then mine was false." If you're looking for a pleasant ramble and some smiles, then this novel will work well.
Do You like book Loitering With Intent (2001)?
Loitering with Intent is Fleur Talbot’s autobiography. It is Fleur’s story about the time when she was working as a secretary for Sir Quentin Oliver’s Autobiographical Association. While working there, Fleur was also working on her first novel, Warrender Chase. Written and constructed in a précis and straightforward way, with numerous beautiful repetitions that are always followed through; a superbly written story, recommendable to anyone. As Fleur moves her story along we get to experience her discovery: something is not right with sir Quentin and his association. Scared members want to leave the association but are somehow blackmailed by Sir Quentin. Fleur finds their autobiographies incredibly dull and badly written and decides to re-write them. What is strange is that they don’t seem to mind. In fact, they are convinced that it must have happened the way Fleur wrote it. Stranger still is that Fleur’s Warrender Chase is being played out in real life by the members of the association. Despite everything that is going on in Fleur’s life she doesn’t care about anything apart from her novel; it is all inspiration for her writing. She is witty, independent and at times a bit ruthless and mean; in many ways she is a modern female version of Wilde’s sensational Lord Henry. When Fleur’s novel gets stolen, she gets to act out like a fictional heroin detective in order to get it back, and getting to read how she goes about it is very much like the reading experience equivalent of taking the first drag of a cigarette after a glass of wine, - divine. Loitering with Intent is so far from waste of tree as a novel possibly can be. It manages to mess with your head and at times you forget that it is a fictional story about a writer, writing about the time when she wrote her first novel, really written by internationally award winning Muriel Sparks. Don’t go and look for Warrender Chase at the library, sadly it does not exist.
—Michaela
I think how one feels about this novel is going to depend on how one feels about its narrator, Fleur Talbot. Fleur, an aspiring novelist, is plunked down among a group of odd characters and is clearly meant to be the voice of reason, but she also displays a fair amount of obliviousness to the feelings of others. I found this obliviousness to be one of the main sources of hilarity in the book, but I can certainly see how others might feel differently. Fleur also spends quite a bit of time describing her writing process to the reader, which, again, I thought was quite interesting but which others might find dull or irrelevant. The plot of this book is exceedingly silly but amusing in a low-stakes kind of way. Honestly, this book was different from anything I've ever read before. I'm definitely interested in reading other Muriel Spark books, but it's hard to imagine they'll live up to the madcap antics of this one.
—Julie Ehlers
Muriel Spark is always a pleasure and a surprise. Yes, many of her central characters are writers or artists, but they are not the same writer or artist time after time. Fleur Talbot, the novelist whose memoir of writing her first novel constitutes this novel, is a narrator of uncertain reliability.The novel is set in immediately post-War London, with many goods still rationed and many men fairly recently back from the War. Fleur finds a job with Sir Quentin Oliver and his autobiography society (other people's autobiographies, that is), and the novel she writes while working for him has a number of disconcerting parallels to events in his society. Did her novel (a copy of which, she says, has been stolen from her rented room) inspire those events, or take them as models? We know what Fleur tells us, but there is no other voice to confirm her information. In one sense, we have no choice but to believe her, and yet -- there is something about her that is sufficiently self-involved that this reader, at any rate, never came to trust her entirely.That doesn't make the book unsatisfying, unless you demand a pat ending. It's a marvelous read, short-listed for the Booker in 1981, when it was published. But if you want the expected, you shouldn't be reading Spark anyway.
—David
