Loitering with Intent - Muriel Spark

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Loitering with Intent

by
Muriel Spark

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Title:	Loitering with Intent
Author:	Muriel Spark
Genre:	Novel
Written:	1981
Length:	217 pages
Availability:	Loitering with Intent - US
	Loitering with Intent - UK
	Loitering with Intent - Canada

Shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize

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Our Assessment:

A- : amusing and nicely done

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
Christian Science Monitor	.	13/7/1981	Pamela Marsh
New Republic	.	30/5/1981	William Abrahams
New Statesman	.	22/5/1981	Nicholas Shrimpton
The NY Rev. of Books	.	25/6/1981	Robert Towers
The NY Times Book Rev.	.	31/5/1981	B.G.Harrison
The New Yorker	.	8/6/1981	John Updike
TLS	.	25/5/1981	Jeremy Treglown

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The complete review's Review:

       Loitering with Intent is the story of a struggling but carefree would-be author, Fleur Talbot. She recounts her recent unusual adventures: the twin-track story of the novel she has been working on for years, Warrender Chase, and her brief career as secretary to the short-lived Autobiographical Association.
       Fleur is consumed by her work on the novel, but she must also make ends meet. It is 1949 Britain, "modern times" to Fleur, and even if these are also still difficult times, with food still being rationed, she gives a sense that opportunity is all about. When Fleur needs a job she winds up in the employ of Sir Quentin Oliver and his Autobiographical Association: at least it offers the "promise of a totally new experience".
       Fleur gets more than she bargained for, but she takes it all in stride. The Autobiographical Association has ten members when Fleur begins her work there. It is a group of Sir Quentin's "Very important friends, V.I.P.s." They want to create a record of their remarkable lives, to place "the facts on record for posterity", and so they are penning their memoirs. But, because of English libel laws, they must do so in secret, and they plan to only release the material some seventy years hence, when all the people mentioned are sure to be dead.
       The "extraordinary" lives of the members of the group prove to be a bit less than that, but part of Fleur's job is to spruce up the memoirs. She doesn't merely fix up style and grammar either; she's willing to spice up things and embellish the record. As she -- and the others -- find, fact and fiction intermingle more easily than one might have thought (or wanted).
       Working there for a while, Fleur finds that:

Sir Quentin was conforming more and more to the character of my Warrender Chase; it was amazing, I could have invented him, I could have invented all of them -- the lot.

But Loitering with Intent is more than your usual book-within-a-book or meditation on authorial power. Fact indeed does affect fiction, but in a wholly unexpected way.
Fleur's book is accepted for publication, but then sinister things begin to happen. Fleur finds that:

(...) not only was Sir Quentin exerting his influence to suppress my Warrender Chase, but he was using, stealing my myth. Without a mythology, a novel is nothing.

       All of a sudden the publisher no longer wants to publish, and all traces of the book start to disappear. Fleur recognizes what is happening, and manages to turn the tables on Sir Quentin and save the day (or at least the novel). Sir Quentin's fall, into the abyss of Warrender Chase is, however, unstoppable, and fact follows fiction faithfully to the end.

       Spark's story sparkles throughout. There is some adventure, some mystery, and some serious subjects are broached as well -- but it is all done in good jolly fun. Loitering with Intent is filled with wicked humour, written in crisp sentences. It is a pleasure to read: here is someone who has mastered the craft, who knows how to write (as so few authors do nowadays).
       Nothing is too serious, nothing is too frivolous. And there's a good yarn here, too. Several, in fact. Fleur says: "I do dearly love a turn of events", and Spark keeps things all awhirl throughout.
       It is not merely the story, and Fleur's pitch-perfect tone, that make the novel a success. The details and asides are all very well done as well. The characters, from Sir Quentin's strategically incontinent mother to the men in Fleur's life to each of the smaller characters are all nicely drawn and beautifully used. There is no excess here at all. Things speed along, in the rough and tumble life of that time (and that period in Fleur's life), but nothing is rushed either.

       Loitering with Intent is an entertainment. Nothing grand or weighty. But it is a very fine entertainment. Recommended.

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Links:

Loitering with Intent:

New Directions publicity page
Excerpt

Muriel Spark:

Muriel Spark at Writing Scotland
Muriel Spark Archive at the National Library of Scotland
Interview with Janice Galloway
Rejoice, Stupid: The Novels of Muriel Spark by Benjamin Anastas at Bookforum

Other books by Muriel Spark under review:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Contemporary British fiction at the complete review

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About the Author:

British author Muriel Spark lived 1918 to 2006.

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