Spark hands out a lesson in Finishing : ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2004/03/07 > Spark hands out a lesson in Finishing

Spark hands out a lesson in Finishing
Sunday, March 07, 2004
The Finishing School
By Muriel Spark
Penguin/Viking, €18.45
Reviewed byVanessa BermanOne of the most clichedpieces of advice given to writers is to `write what you know'.This might explain why so many authors produce novels about the act of writing.

Many authors use an autobiographical style, producing novels that barely conceal the fact that they are describing their own lives, writing processes and difficulties.

Tobias Wolff's recent novel, Old School, explores his teen years and his literary ambitions. Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man does the same.

When an author as prolific and celebrated as Muriel Spark chooses for her main characters two young men struggling to write their first novels, the reader must consider what questions are raised, and what answered, by her choice of this subject matter.

Rowland Mahler and his wife, Nina, run a finishing school on Lake Geneva, where teenagers are sent by their parents to be, as one of the students says, "polished off".

It seems that they are taught little, and allowed to develop freely their own eccentricities. There is only a vague hierarchy between staff, students and domestic staff, with relationships developing between anyone and everyone at the school.

Rowland's mind is not wholly on the school, as he is constantly and increasingly distracted by the book he is writing.

This distraction is heightened by an infer iority complex about a pupil named Chris, his main rival at the school. Chris attends the school with the understanding that he is there in order to complete his first novel. He is to avail of the expert tutelage of Rowland, and is expected to produce a masterpiece.

He is confident and casual about his talent, which infuriates Rowland. The more Chris writes, the less Rowland can.

He is consumed with the idea that Chris's success is stifling his own, and becomes more and more incapable of writing as his fury grows.

The other pupils at the school are crudely-drawn cartoons, stereotypes such as the dotty English girl who longs to open a village shop selling "ceramics and transparent scarves", or the mysterious eastern European princess.

They simply provide a background for the drama that constantly threatens to unfold between Chris and Rowland. However it might threaten, though, this drama never really unfolds.

The murder and tragedy that are alluded to throughout the novel remain only hints, figments of so many overactive imaginations.

The end of the novel is contrived and almost hurried: each of the students is given a happy ending, all the loose ends are tied up nicely, but all within the space of two pages.

Each has his or her inevitable future set out as expected, and no more need be said about them.

Nina has become incidental to the plot by the end of the novel, and this is reflected in the closing pages.

The fate of the book's heroes,Chris and Rowland, is so predictable and facile that it undermines what little complexity existed in their relationship throughout the novel.

Adiscussion occurs between Rowland and Chris about whether their characters take on a life of their own, Rowland saying his characters act almost of their own accord; Chris saying his only do what he tells them to do.
Spark admitted on a recent BBC Radio 4 interview that her characters live only on the page, like Chris's. This superficiality or lack of empathy may be an explanation for the abrupt, absurd ending she gives them.

In this engaging, entertaining book, Spark focuses the reader's attention on the act of writing, and as a corollary, the act of reading.

The reader is constantly made aware of the process of writing: how scenes are developed, the choices made by writers for their characters.

Chris has his book published, and it is "highly praised for its fine, youthful disregard of dry historical facts."

One wonders if Spark herself is taking an elderly, yet sprightly, disregard for the conventions of the realist novel: depth of character, plausibility of plot.

Each page of The Finishing School is alive with her customary ironic, dry wit, and yet she somehow leaves the reader thirsty for more. The question is, is it worth waiting for?