The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: A Novel (P.S.) by Muriel Spark
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Book Reviews of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: A Novel (P.S.)
Book Review: One of the Best Books I've read!
Summary: 5 Stars
I really enjoyed reading this book!
I read it all in one day that's how good it is !
Book Review: Compact, complex, tragicomic, philosphical
Summary: 4 Stars
Tragic, because the more the main character Sandy tries to avoid her fate, the more she creates it for herself. Comic, because the writer's matter-of-fact style highlights some of life's simple ironies.
The title character of this book is Miss Jean Brodie, teacher at a private girls' school. Miss Brodie is "larger than life," or so she presents herself. Though in the view of the author, Miss Brodie is very much a product of her time, Miss Brodie sees herself as transcendent. Miss Brodie's evolving, imaginative narrative of her own life is the main topic that her students study. Her narrative dominates her vision, and often she cannot see interpersonal or political events as they really are. We see Miss Brodie through the eyes of Sandy, one of her favourite students. Sandy, too, spins imaginative narratives in which she is the hero, using raw material from books, stories, and Miss Brodie's life. When Sandy reaches maturity, she finds she must distance herself from the mentor she too closely resembles. And yet, the more Sandy imagines she has rejected Miss Brodie, the more Sandy's life parallels Miss Brodie's life.
Philosophically, the book is a meditation on predestination. Spark mentions, almost in passing, the Calvinistic view that how you live your life has no bearing on the eternal future God chooses for you. She regularly interrupts the narrative with a glimpse of the future of one of the characters. Often there seems to be no connection between the little girls we are getting to know and the adult women they become. This in itself is a parody of the randomness of the theory of predestination. But the real irony of the theory is played out in Sandy's life. On the one hand, Sandy's dreamy, self-absorbed personality seems a carbon copy of Miss Brodie's. On the other hand, Sandy finds Miss Brodie ridiculous. Sandy tries hard to make choices that reject Miss Brodie's influence. But they all backfire, and the themes that drive Sandy's life - vicarious love and confused renunciation - parallel Miss Brodie's anyway.
Sparks writes in a deceptively simple style. She tosses us into the middle of a scene, and describes small awkward moments that capture big themes. The awkward moments make all of the characters look slightly ridiculous. Because we recognize the moments, we take a second look at our own ordinariness, and the deceptive games hidden within it. As the book opens up our perception, we might laugh at ourselves or pity others we know. We're led to ask whether we can really escape some of life's ironies, or whether we are...predestined.
Book Review: The Complex and Enigmatic Miss Brodie
Summary: 4 Stars
I enjoyed The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and would definitely recommend it. At first, I thought it would be a charming coming-of-age story about a group of privileged girls and their adoring teacher. It is, in fact, much more complex and enigmatic than that. It takes place in 1930s Edinburgh, between the two world wars. The rise of Fascism in Europe serves as a historical backdrop as well as a parallel to Miss Brodie's attempts to control the lives of others.
Spark shows us how the older generation has been marked by WWI (Miss Brodie lost her fiancé, Mr. Lloyd lost his arm, and many of the teachers seem to be hardened by life and suffering). In contrast to some of the other teachers and the headmistress, Miss Brodie is a passionate woman; she is a great believer in art, music, and is full of romantic notions that she seeks to impress upon her chosen students. However, Miss Brodie has a dark, manipulative, self-centered side as well. She seeks to influence her clique of students to do her bidding and this leads to her ultimate undoing.
Book Review: Slim Masterpiece
Summary: 4 Stars
I couldn't help by shake my head and marvel after finishing The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Not only are the characters superb, the story is great and the writing uniquely insightful. Also, the novel is so cleverly and masterfully written. From the first pages you are taken in by its fugue-like structure. I've never read a book like it, where past and present fuse into one, as if the narrator is dipping in and out of time to present a perfectly cogent story not hindered by the rules of causality. Future events are casually revealed, descriptions are repeated as if musical motifs, and yet the plot moves inexorably to its inevitable conclusion. In the end you are left enriched by the lives of Miss Jean Brodie and her set, by their idiosyncrasies, failures, highs and lows. And it's short enough to read in a sitting or two, to boot!Book Review: The movie was better
Summary: 3 Stars
The 1968 movie, with Dame Maggie Smith's superb performance as Miss Brodie, is one of my all-time favorite films. I'd never felt the need to read the original novel until recently. Maybe my expectations were too high but I was disappointed. I was surprised by the writing style which is repetitive and at times confusing. The characters of the "Brodie Set" seem poorly sketched out. One girl is "known for sex", another has "small piggy eyes", another is "stupid", and so on for all 6 girls - and these descriptions are repeated over and over throughout the novel. Was this a technique? If so, I can't figure out what it accomplished. The story also frequently goes back in forth in time, paragraph to paragraph, which felt messy to me. At times I would see a flash of brilliance, a gem, which took me back to the movie. I gave this 3 stars for these moments, and for the concept (this is not the typical teacher/student mentor movie) which launched an unforgettable movie. There are very few examples of a movie being better than the book - but this is one of them.
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