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The Abbess of Crewe: A Modern Morality Tale
Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780670100293
ISBN: 0670100293
Label: Viking Adult
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
Number Of Pages: 116
Publication Date: October 31, 1974
Publisher: Viking Adult
Studio: Viking Adult
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Editorial Review:
Published in 1974 and inspired by Watergate, Muriel Spark's Abbess of Crewe is much more amusing and infinitely drier. It transpires that Alexandra, the title character, has bugged and videotaped the Abbey--except for the confessionals and chapel--with electronic "devices fearfully and wonderfully beyond the reach of a humane vocabulary." After her only rival decamps for London and the arms of a Jesuit, police and newspapers swoop in. All the while, the Abbess (an adherent of Machiavelli, The Art of War, and the Modernist poets) keeps her cool, sacrificing her confederates as necessary and trying to assure herself of helicopter-hopping Gertrude's loyalty. (Gertrude is off curing cannibals of their customs and calls in occasionally from places whose unpronounceable names will soon be replaced by other equally unpronounceable names.) Spark's nuns on the run are more than stand-ins for the sweaty American President and his operatives; the satire extends to Anglo-snobbism and -Catholicism. The Abbess explains to the Pope that "electronic surveillance (even if a convent were one day to practise it) does not differ from any other type of watchfulness, the which is a necessity of a Religious Community; we are told in the Scriptures 'to watch and to pray,' which is itself a paradox."
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - About Nixon-- Or Bush??
Spark said this was a dig at the Bush Administration, but read it now for a new perspective. The line-tapping nuns of Crewe feel just as much like Bush's NSA as Nixon's plumbers.
Who's Alexandra? Personally, I think Bush is the model for Winifrede... Read this for some laughs and some razor-sharp cuts at the "paranoid style" of government that Richard Hofstadter warned us of 40 years ago-- boy oh boy, did he know what he was talking about....
Rating:  - Scandal Urbi Et Orbi
Muriel Spark's The Abbess Of Crewe (1973) is a brief comic meditation on the forms and abuses of power in the Anglo Saxon world. Partially inspired by the events and the political repercussions of Watergate, The Abbess of Crewe transposes the narrative to a Catholic convent in England, where a small cabal of elitist nuns, blinded by power and a foolish faith in their own impervious superiority, has seized control of the abbey through a startling and inventive series of Machiavellian maneuvers. The ... Read More
Rating: - 'That woman has a bad mind'
-- unquote the most formidable of my university tutors, declining to follow up my recommendation that he should see The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie).
I had the presence of mind to answer 'Well so have I' but not the gall to say to him 'How about you?' Really she only has a 'bad' mind in the sense we all have bad minds -- there are thoughts we do not lightly own up to. What makes Spark so unique is that the thoughts are so diverse and fanciful. She is all over the place in the best sense, she is as ... Read More
Rating: - a fable to keep you laughing
If this book were written in a serious tone, I fear it could be taken as very offensive slander. Instead, it is a brilliant send-up of Watergate and similar abuses of power. It centers on the election of a new abbess.
Candidate 1 recites her favorite (Protestant) English poetry rather than the Psalms, supports a strong sense of societial class, and uses electronic eavesdropping as a mere extention of listening to convent gossip as a way to maintain proper order.
Candidate 2 is compulsive ... Read More
Rating: - Witty and relevant
I was about nine years old when the Watergate scandal broke, and I must confess that I don't know much about it beyond our national mythology of bugging, break-ins, erased tapes and G. Gordon Liddy. Is this satire fair to Nixon and his gang? I don't know, but I suspect that it is. At any rate, it remains a witty parable of hypocrisy in high places and, given the rate at which our technology is improving, its comments on surveillance are bound to keep this book topical for quite some time to come.
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