Fleur Talbot is an impecunious novelist who takes a job working for upper class pompous twit Sir Quentin Oliver, who founded the Autobiographical Association to encourage its members to record their memoirs. Fleur's job was to revise and spice up these otherwise dull recollections.

Life begins to imitate art as members of the association begin to act out events already recorded in Fleur's as yet unpublished manuscript Warrender Chase, and the skull-duggery and derring-do that fairly races through the pages is quite reminiscent of a '50's farce. In fact the 1950s are well-painted, as are the characters, from the deliciously loopy Lady Edwina, Quentin's mother, to the many and varied men in Fleur's life.

This is a crisply written book, with a plot that fairly zips along. It's something of a period piece, which I enjoyed, but was happy enough to finish and set aside in favour of some plainer fare. ( )

Oh my what fun! a stalwart heroine, nasty villains, intrigue, class structure, friendship and art all told with that extraordinary articulateness that gifted writers mastered in 20th century UK. Spark’s style and wonderful prose is related to that of Penelope Lively, and our heroine also, but the story and its twists are very different. Our narrator’s interesting and unique views on people and events is constantly amusing and intriguing. An example is horrible people. Fleur delights in them as their debilitations are simply wonderful for her to observe, they don’t bother her in the slightest and if anything she seeks them out. A wonderful read I couldn’t put down. ( )

Looking back on her life, Fleur Talbot informs us that it felt wonderful to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century. They were heady days for Fleur in 1949. She was busy living a somewhat chaotic life, penning her first novel, “Warrender Chase,” and taking on temporary employment as secretary to Sir Quentin Oliver and his Autobiographical Association. Life has a way of imitating art, or vice versa, and certainly in this case Fleur is quick to note similarities between her character, Warrender, and Sir Quentin. Indeed, more similarities emerge between lesser characters and those she encounters in her employment. It’s almost as though they were deliberately enacting her novel. Does it seem too fanciful? Fleur certainly thinks so, suspecting rather that Sir Quentin is up to something nefarious. It’s bound to end in either heartache or heart attack, but both would be, I’m sure she’d agree, grist for the mill of her future endeavours as a novelist.

Muriel Spark is clearly having the time of her life with Fleur’s autobiographical account of her younger life. But she’s also having great fun with the play between fiction and autobiography as well as the preposterous lives we imagine for our favourite novelists. Nothing is really as it seems here. How could it be? It would be absurd. On the other hand, life just might be absurd. And for a novelist as playful and subtle as Spark, it almost certainly must be.

Good fun and warmly recommended. ( )

Pretty funny. I'll have to read this in print sometime.

Quotable: "How wonderful it feels to be an artist, and a woman, in the twentieth century!" ( )

A writer writes a book about a writer who is writing a book, joining a circle of writers writing books - and all of them are autobiographical to some degree. It could be very tedious but in Spark's hands it is sharp, witty and challenging. October 2019 ( )