THE FINISHING SCHOOL
By Muriel Spark, Doubleday, New York, 2004, 181 pagesThe publication of Muriel Spark’s 24th book will surely cause her fans to rub their hands together in anticipation. And, once again, Spark doesn’t disappoint. What’s come to be expected in her books is all there: characters given life in amazingly few words, major events seemingly tossed aside, empty lives dissected with razor-sharp intelligence, and an admirable, even compassionate, response to people desperately in need of affirmation.
Spark’s best-known work is probably “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” her 1961 novel about the devastating effect a self-absorbed schoolteacher has on her impressionable students. It is a fine novel, both amusing and cautionary. Fans of that book will delight in discovering that “The Finishing School,” is a contemporary exploration of the same territory Spark covered in “Jean Brodie” nearly a half-century ago.
This time the teacher is Rowland Mahler, a published author nearing 30 and rather discontent: he is faced with writer’s block. At least that’s what he keeps telling his decidedly practical wife, Nina, with whom he has founded College Sunrise, a finishing school of around ten students. Its efficacy is tenuous, for College Sunrise changes its venue often, always “leaving commendably few debts behind.”
The curriculum of College Sunrise is eclectic, to say the least: Social History, Modern Art, Photography, and Nina’s “casual afternoon comme il fauttalks, as she called them” on subjects as disparate as getting a job at the United Nations to the correct way to hold a boiled egg while eating it.
Such a school will always attract students like the one who insists that “ceramics” is spelled “S-A-H-R-A-M-I-X.” But such a school will also attract to its popular creative writing course students like Chris Wiley (note his last name!), a charmer of a young man nearing completion of a novel about Mary, Queen of Scots.
Chris is confident, creative, and cosmopolitan— and not quite 18. “His own sense of security was so strong as to be unnoticeable. He knew himself. He felt his talent. It was all a question of time and exercise.”
Rowland’s writer’s block is exacerbated by his jealousy of Chris. He becomes obsessed with Chris’ novel and the young man’s growing celebrity: “‘I could kill him . . .. But would that be enough.” But it isn’t only the fact of Chris’s novel that distresses Rowland. With icy scrutiny Spark dissects Rowland’s increasing attraction to Chris—and Chris’s increasing need for Rowland’s presence in his life. It is a symbiotic relationship that will reconcile itself in a not-so-surprising manner in a few years—and at College Sunrise.
“The Finishing School” is vintage Spark. Its vigor lies in its quirkiness. In fewer than 200 pages, Muriel Spark, herself a convert to Roman Catholicism, has managed to cast doubt upon our modern values with a sharp eye and an even sharper wit. We laugh at her characters’ imprudence even as we are reminded of our own.
Steven Whitton is a professor of English at Jacksonville State University.
