Like A Cat Loves Bird

';A deeply stylish, astute, and illuminating portrait of a fascinating writer.'Francesca Wade, author of Gertrude Stein: An AfterlifeA spiky and delicious new literary portrait of the great twentieth-century British author of beloved novels such as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Girls of Slender Means';She was, if you believe what you read in the papers: a genius, a survivor, a bad mother, a fickle friend, a closeted lesbian, a tyrant, a loner, an eccentric, a recluse, a gossip, and an arch-manipulator. She would politely encourage you not to believe what you read in the papers.'from Like a Cat Loves a BirdMuriel Spark (19182006) was one of literature's great shapeshifters. That mercurial quality is found in her strange, brilliant, cruel novelswith their plots featuring a cast of elderly characters receiving telephone calls from Death, the devil going clubbing in Peckham, and a fascist schoolmistress leading her coterie of girls astraybut it is also true of her as a person. As sly, nimble, and elegant as Spark's own work, Like a Cat Loves a Bird offers a thrilling new perspective on a remarkable life and career that spanned much of the twentieth century.From Spark's childhood in Edinburgh to her final years in Tuscanyvia South Africa, London, New York, and RomeJames Bailey traces a light-footed journey around the world and through the novelist's strange and magnificent books. The result is an irresistible story of transformation, wit, and fierce determinationand a passionate case for this vital modern artist.

Pages: 320, Hardcover, Princeton University Press