The Bachelors – Novel: 0 (New Directions Classic) - Softcover

Spark, Muriel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811214249 ISBN 13: 9780811214247

Publisher: New Directions, 2007

Synopsis

First found contentedly chatting in their London clubs and shopping at Fortnum's, the cozy bachelors (as any Spark reader might guess) are not set to stay cozy for long. Soon enough, the men are variously tormented -- defrauded or stolen from; blackmailed or pressed to attend horrid s ances -- and then plunged, all together, into the nastiest of lawsuits. At the center of that suit hovers pale, blank Patrick Seton, the medium. Meanwhile, horrors of every size plague the poor bachelors -- from the rising price of frozen peas ("Your hand's never out of your pocket") to epileptic fits, forgeries, spiritualists foaming with protoplasm, and murder. And every horror delights: each is lit up by Spark's uncanny wit -- at once malicious, funny, and deadly serious. The Bachelors shows "the most gifted and innovative British novelist" (The New York Times) at her wicked best.

About this title

Review:

"A profoundly serious comic writer whose wit advances, never undermines or diminishes, her ideas" (New York Times Book Review)

"A wholly original presence in modern literature" (ANDREW MOTION)

"She has a receptive and wholly distinctive genius" (A N WILSON Spectator)

"The care with which she uses words is matched by a gloriously carefree attitude. It's all part of her sanity, her breezy authorial self-confidence; and because of this I think that reading a blast of her prose every morning is a far more restorative way to start a day than a shot of espresso" (Daily Telegraph)

"I am dazzled by The Bachelors. It is the cleverest and most elegant of all Mrs Spark's clever and elegant books" (EVELYN WAUGH)

"My admiration for Spark's contribution to world literature knows no bounds. She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent - the crème de la crème" (IAN RANKIN)

"Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards, decisive as a smashed glass is decisive" (JOHN UPDIKE New Yorker)

"Spark is a natural, a paradigm of that rare sort of artist from whom work of the highest quality flows as elementally as current through a circuit" (New Yorker)

"It's easy to see why Waugh admired The Bachelors. But the comedy here is serious in a way that Waugh's satanically energetic comedies of misery rarely are . . . comedies of English manners have rarely been darker" (Daily Telegraph)

Book Description:

'I am dazzled by The Bachelors. It is the cleverest and most elegant of all Spark's clever and elegant books' Evelyn Waugh

Now available in print and eBook as a gorgeous canon

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0811214249
• ISBN 13: 9780811214247
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192