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A Far Cry from Kensington (New Directions Paperbook), by Muriel Spark
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The fraying fringes of 1950s literary London
Rich and slim, the celebrated author Nancy Hawkins takes us in hand and leads us back to her threadbare years in postwar London, where she spends her days working for a mad, near-bankrupt publisher (“of very good books”) and her nights dispensing advice at her small South Kensington rooming house. Everywhere Mrs. Hawkins finds evil: with aplomb, however, she confidently sets about putting things to order, to terrible effect.
- Sales Rank: #1461040 in Books
- Published on: 2014-05-27
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .50" w x 5.20" l, .40 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 192 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Even the title is witty in this latest of Spark's delightful novels, bearing as it does at least three layers of ambiguity. It is a tale told in a splendidly commonsensical way by Mrs. Hawkins, a buxom young war widow who is a tower of strength in a failing London publishing house during the lean years after WW II. She is surrounded, both at work and in her seedy Kensington boarding house, by those slightly off-center eccentrics the Englishand particularly Sparkdraw to perfection; everything on the surface seems utterly realistic, yet fantasy as rich as anything in Garcia Marquez is only a breath away. Mrs. Hawkins selects a hate object among the literary hangers-on at her firm, and that hatred changes her life. She also becomes involved with a Polish dressmaker with a dark secret, invents a supremely successful method of dieting and almost in spite of herself becomes happy. Spark knows the wonderfully zany world of postwar-London publishing backward, her wit has never been more telling, and any book person is going to gobble this up. A sample, to whet the appetite: "Publishers, for obvious reasons, attempt to make friends with their authors. Martin York tried to make authors of his friends."
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This 1988 novel is told from the perspective of Mrs. Hawkins, who, now living a leisurely existence in Italy, looks back on her days as a young widow employed by an oddball publisher. Typical Spark, the plot soon becomes laced with mystery involving blackmail, suicide, and other dastardly doings. Great fun.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“A 1950s Kensington of shabby-genteel bedsitters, espresso bars...irradiated with the sudden glows of lyricism she can so beautifully effect.” (Sunday Times [London])
“The divine Spark is shining at her brightest--pure delight.” (Independent)
“The plot arrow is large and sharp and accurate. There's crazies, death, fist-fighting, insults, medical emergencies, injustice ... hoodoo and more.” (Stephen Hanulec - Glyph Jockey)
Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Delightful
By C. Ebeling
In a novel narrated by a character who believes it her life mission to dispense advice, author Muriel Spark has her counsel a would-be writer to imagine confiding in a letter to a personal friend and to write the story that way. Spark has followed her own advice and it works delightfully. The best part of her approach is that she puts out some dramatic irony so that the reader is not just a passive listener accepting of everything the narrator asserts but is aware that not quite all of her advice, nor her assessment of herself, is always on target. There is a sly wit and spot-on social observations in full bloom here.
This is the story of a woman told looking back to 30 years before, to 1954, to a rooming house in Kensington, London, a far cry from her present circumstances. In 1954, she is "Mrs. Hawkins," no first name, with the heft of a zaftig figure and the tragedy of being a war widow. Everyone knows who she is though she does not always know them in return; she is expected, she believes, to hand out advice, to take care of others, and commensurate with this station in life, she is a mid-level editor in publishing. She has lots of plates twirling on sticks: her world at the rooming house, her job, herself. Then along comes Hector Bartlett who embodies what she hates the most: an ambitious but grossly untalented writer, a sycophant. The upright Mrs. Hawkins, loyal to the truth as she sees it, nails him with a particularly appropriate French vulgarism that becomes a refrain for her has he periodically intrudes on her life, a vulgarism that keeps costing her jobs. Because of Hector, her story becomes a series of reversals, from the tragic to the comic.
There are many characters, many amusing episodes, many trenchant observations going on in this book. I've been debating about how many stars to award only because Spark has outdone this book with others, including the recent REALITY AND DREAMS and the not-so-recent THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS. What the heck, I'll give it 5. I wasn't disappointed in the least.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
No half portions here - read in full
By Amanda Richards
This is one of those books that cannot described in a nutshell. If you had to hazard a guess at a description, you'd have to place it firmly in the comedy/ tragedy/ drama/ mystery/ romance section, or simply file it under Spark: Muriel in the Classics section.
Narrated by the once round and central character, Agnes Hawkins (a.k.a. Mrs. Hawkins or Nancy), the story revolves around her experiences as a young widow living in furnished rooms in a semi-detached building in South Kensington. She colorfully describes her neighbors and acquaintances, and gives us tantalizing glimpses into their little secret worlds, in which she is a trustee and confidante.
Despite the mysterious black boxes and the lurking threat of enemies, known and unknown, our heroine manages to keep her head above water, remains a pillar of strength and finds true love among the rubble. Thanks to her diet plan (freely given to the reader as a bonus for purchasing the book), she gains new self-respect, and reinvents herself in a new country, a far cry from her humble beginnings.
A simple classic by an inspired writer.
Amanda Richards
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Muriel Spark Casts Her Gimlet Eye On Publishing and the Communal Life
By elizabeth Kvam
Absorbing, satirical tale about mid-century book publishing in London and a colourful collection of souls living in a house of bed sits.
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