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Appointment in Arezzo: A friendship with Muriel Spark

Appointment in Arezzo: A friendship with Muriel Spark

by Alan Taylor (Author), Alan Taylor (Author), Alan Taylor (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2018

    $3.43

  • New

    Paperback 2018

    $11.78
Synopsis

This book is an intimate, fond and funny memoir of one of the greatest novelists of the last century. This colourful, personal, anecdotal, indiscreet and admiring memoir charts the course of Muriel Spark's life revealing her as she really was. Once, she commented sitting over a glass of chianti at the kitchen table, that she was upset that the academic whom she had appointed her official biographer did not appear to think that she had ever cracked a joke in her life. Alan Taylor here sets the record straight about this and many other things.


With sources ranging from notebooks kept from his very first encounter with Muriel and the hundreds of letters they exchanged over the years, this is an invaluable portrait of one of Edinburgh's premiere novelists. The book will be published to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Muriel's birth in 2018.

$3.43

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 224
 Publisher: Polygon (An Imprint of Birlinn Limited)
Published: 04 Oct 2018
ISBN 10: 1846974674
ISBN 13: 9781846974670

Media Reviews

'an insightful, fond and gossipy read, with a Sparkian title to boot'

-- Kirsty Wark * The Observer *

'Sharply observant, Taylor's cautious, respectful, sincere and measured prose sustains what's at the core of the whole book: affection. A sense of liking runs through it. And from the moment of their first meeting, Spark seems to have recognised the affection, critical sensibility and genuineness of Taylor's respect...it has the method, the sensitivity to moments, the delicacy and strength, the senses of both vulnerability and durability, of one of Spark's favourites, Proust's In Search of Lost Time'

-- Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University * The National *

'a highly personal and often amusing new book about [Spark and Taylor's] friendship'

-- Marianne Taylor * Herald Magazine *

'an affectionate but clear-sighted memoir...Taylor creates a mosaic portrait of Spark, that is alert and alive almost novelistically nuanced. His introductory chapter would serve a casual reader or student ideally as an introduction to Spark and her work...'

-- Brian Morton * Herald *

'Anyone who loves Muriel Spark's novels will enjoy this intelligent and affectionate book. Anyone who reads it, though ignorant of the novels, will surely want to read them'

-- Allan Massie * Scotsman *
Author Bio

Alan Taylor has contributed to numerous publications, including The TLS, The New Yorker and The Melbourne Age, and edited four acclaimed anthologies - The Assassin's Cloak (2000), The Secret Annexe (2004), The Country Diaries (2009) and most recently, Glasgow: TheAutobiography (2016).