The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Penguin Modern Classics)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Muriel Spark

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Muriel Spark
Introduction: Candia McWilliam
Edition: Paperback
Published: 2000-02-24
ISBN: 0141181427
Number of pages: 144
Publisher: Penguin Classics

Book Reviews of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Penguin Modern Classics)

Book Review: A book best enjoyed by those in their prime
Summary: 5 Stars

Don't give up on this book if you don't like it the first time you read it. It improves with age...your age.

At 14, I just didn't "get" the book. Going to an English all-girls' school I could absolutely identify with the opening passage relating to the dreaded Panama hat, and like many of the girls in the book, boys to us were pretty much a foreign country. However, apart from those aspects I felt the book was irrelevant and rather dated compared to my school days in the late 1970s.

Twenty plus years later, I came across the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie again, and understood its power.

For such a slim volume, this book has remarkable depth, and other reviewers have done a tremendous job of outlining the story. Jean Brodie was not a frustrated spinister in general terms, but she was frustrated and bound by the conventions of that era, however daring she appeared to be at times. Her passion was her girls; to shape their minds, broaden their horizons, and to be honest, share her view of the world.

This a book that works once you understand more about life. To learn that however passionately you may believe in something, in hindsight some things are not all we understood them to be, but to never lose that passion.

Most of all, to know that one's prime is a state of mind, not an age.

I've read it several times now, and alongside Cold Comfort Farm (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition), it is my favourite book from that era.

There is also an excellent film, whilst not entirely true to the book, has Maggie Smith in probably her best performance, and definitely worth watching. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Summary of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Penguin Modern Classics)

The elegantly styled classic story of a young, unorthodox teacher and her special--and ultimately dangerous--relationship with six of her students.

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