The Bachelors

The Bachelors displays the best of Sparkian satire, placing her at the heart of a great literary tradition alongside Waugh and Trollope, Wilde and Wodehouse. It demands rediscovery.

''It''s easy to see why Waugh admired The Bachelors. On one level, it is a blithely carnivorous satire in the Waugh mould. The bachelors of the title - almost the only men we meet in the narrative - are the thirty-something male barristers, teachers, journalists and museum attendants of a small patch of West London. They lead inturned, doddery, superannuated lives, pottering between grocers, coffee-houses, bedsits and the houses of their mothers and aunts. But the comedy here is serious in a way that Waugh''s satanically energetic comedies of misery rarely are . . . comedies of English manners have seldom been darker'' Daily Telegraph

''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