The Complete Short Stories

By: Muriel Spark

Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson, Emilia Fox, Richard E. Grant

Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's Summary

From the cruel irony of A Member of the Family to the fateful echoes of The Go-Away Bird and the unexpectedly sinister The Girl I Left Behind Me, in settings that range from South Africa to the Portobello Road, Muriel Spark coolly probes the idiosyncrasies that lurk beneath the veneer of human respectability, displaying the acerbic wit and wisdom that are the hallmarks of her unique talent.

The Complete Short Stories is a collection to be loved and cherished, from one of the finest short-story writers of the twentieth century, rediscover it on the 100th anniversary of Muriel Spark's birth with outstanding performances by Emilia Fox, Richard E. Grant and Juliet Stevenson.

©2001 Copyright Administration Ltd (P)2011 Canongate Books

A must for Muriel Spark fans!

I'm not sure how one goes about reviewing a collection of short stories, especially one as comprehensive as this one, with over 40 stories which have no common theme or motif. What this book demonstrated most clearly to this recently minted Muriel Spark fan was just how creative and imaginative this writer was. Her novels are certainly brimming with unusual characters and circumstances, but in the short story format she also allowed herself to play around with different genres, throwing in plenty of fantastical and paranormal elements. I can't say those were my favourite kind of stories, as I tended to favour those which had more in common with the Muriel Spark I adopted after listening to Memento Mori and Loitering with Intent, to name just those two. Quite a few of the stories took place in the African continent, and I supposed the author must have lived there at some point. A quick Google search and an article entitled "The First Half of Muriel Spark" by Roger Kimball yielded the following information:

"Muriel Spark’s sojourn in Africa was the opposite of pleasant: a failed marriage, poverty, little prospect of leaving before the end of the war, few friends with literary interests. (Doris Lessing was living someplace in Rhodesia at the time, but the two writers did not meet until many years later.) Nevertheless, she continued to write, poems mostly, and collected material for some of her best-known stories. Africa, as much as Edinburgh, formed her as a writer. It also made her an adult. It was in Africa, she says, that she “learned to cope with life.” “It was there that I learned to keep in mind … the essentials of our human destiny, our responsibilities, and to put in a peripheral place the personal sorrows, frights and horrors that came my way.”

Horrors there were aplenty. The racial situation was barbaric. The Afrikaner women with whom Muriel mingled were full of smug stories about how uppity blacks had been “fixed.” There was, for example, the farmer who discovered a young black boy standing outside the window of his wife’s room, peeping in at her while she breast-fed her baby. For this violation, the farmer shot the boy dead. The woman who told Spark this story only lamented that the farmer had been sent to prison for three years for killing the boy. “I was unable to speak,” Spark reports. “I simply stared at the woman.”"

Muriel Spark obviously used material from real life as creative fodder; the above true account was fictionalized by her in the first story in this collection, The Curtain Blown by the Breeze, one of my favourites because it demonstrates all the strengths which make me appreciate this writer so much: a sense of story with characters that are complex and interesting, an unflinching look at people at their worst, distinguished by a healthy dose of mordant humour.

In all, I'd say I probably fully enjoyed less than a third of the stories, but even those I didn't particularly take to overall had plenty of interesting elements that made them worthwhile, and those I did fully enjoy made for an excellent experience. A must for Muriel Spark lovers and those interested in exploring a writer with plenty of range.

7 of 8 people found this review helpful

Chapter headings

Why are there no titles of each chapter? I cannot see which story I am listening to.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Brilliant readings; diversity of voices & dialects

The collection comprises Spark's complete opus; so the quality of stories is variable. The readings are brilliant — consistently compelling.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

An acquired taste??

I did finish the collection (though the 17 hours felt more like 17 weeks). I had read and enjoyed The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and opted to give this a try. I wish I hadn't.

Some of the stories were interesting. Some had a lovely use of language. Most were rather bad. Some were really more like an outline of a story idea with no characterization (not her strong suit anyway). Some were just so darned predictable that a paragraph in I could tell what the "twist" was going to be and a good fair few were just rather pointless.

Unless you are a die-hard Spark fan, I would really give this a pass.

The narrators, however, did a yeoman's job with it.

1 of 3 people found this review helpful

Exceptional reading of substantial short stories

I only knew Muriel Sparks from Miss Jean Brodie and am not generally a fan of short stories, but was taken by the prospect of readings by Juliet Stevenson, Emma Fox and Richard E Grant. I am so glad – the stories have great range and the narration is absolutely top notch. Some of the stories are a good 2 hours long. All are atmospheric and I loved Sparks’ sly wit.

10 of 11 people found this review helpful

Entertaining

I enjoyed this collection of stories. Well-written, as one might expect, and often full of humour pocking fun at human vanity and snobbery. The stories are varied and encompass such themes as crime, the supernatural and the cares of the human heart.
The narrators are all accomplished performers of audio books and add to the pleasure

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

No matter how good the narrators...

are if the stories are utter garbage. Hated it, a waste of time and money.

5 of 7 people found this review helpful

No mark Spark

The complete short stories in one volume at least gives the satisfaction of having read all that there is to read. The range of the subject matter is wide - from a childhood in South Africa, to Scotland and Manchester to the sad ruminations of a judge in North London. But the quality of the voice is not that great - one or two flashes of insight, but in the main very pedestrian and at times down-right tedious.

I can’t really think of one of the short stories that I really enjoyed, but can easily recall three that I really didn’t enjoy. Still, its read now isn’t it.

7 of 11 people found this review helpful