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The Bachelors (New Directions Classics,)
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780811214247
ISBN: 0811214249
Label: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 186
Publication Date: 1999-09
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Studio: New Directions Publishing Corporation
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Editorial Review:
"Daylight was appearing over London, the great city of bachelors. Half-pint bottles of milk began to be stood at the doorsteps of houses containing single apartments from Hampstead Heath to Greenwich Park, from Wanstead Flats to Putney Heath; but especially in Hampstead, especially in Kensington."
So begins Muriel Spark's supreme 1960 novel The Bachelors. Our very British bachelors come in every stripe: a barrister, a British councilman, a detective, a very curious "priest," a hand-writing expert, a terrifyingly blank spiritual medium, and a guilt-torn good Irish Catholic boy who chews onions to inhibit any success with the opposite sex. Though we first find them contentedly chatting in clubs and shopping at Fortnum's, their cozy bachelor world is not set to stay cozy for long. Soon enough, the men are variously, individually tormented -- defrauded or stolen from; blackmailed or pressed to attend horrid seances -- until, finally, they realize they are about to be plunged, all together, into the nastiest of lawsuits. At the center of that lawsuit, about to face the dock as well as the prospect of unwanted fatherhood, hovers pale Patrick Seton, the medium. Meanwhile, horrors of every size descend upon our poor bachelors -- from the rising price of frozen peas ("Your hand's never out of your pocket") to epileptic fits, musings about murder, and spiritualist mouths foaming with protoplasm. And every horror delights: each is limned by Spark's uncanny wit -- at once surreal, malicious, funny, and ultimately serious. The Bachelors presents "the most gifted and innovative British novelist" (The New York Times) at her wicked best.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - PUPPET-MISTRESS
The scene is a London courtroom where a spiritualist medium is on trial for defrauding a widow of her life savings. One of the main prosecution witnesses is a handwriting expert who suffers from epilepsy. Under questioning he suffers a seizure and the judge asks `Is this man a medium?' It's very clever, in this instance it's very funny, and it's more than slightly heartless. It is the distinctive individual tone of Muriel Spark.
This is one of her best. I found I had to be very alert ... Read More
Rating: - Contentedly Charming To Variously Tormented
"Daylight was appearing over London, the great city of bachelors" is the fist sentence of Muriel Sparks's book, "The Bachelors". The areas of London that had the greatest concentration of bachelors were Queen's Gate, Kensington and King's Road. Places all near the center of the shopping district.
The very British bachelors in this novel, a barrister, a councilman, a detective, an unusual priest, a spiritual medium, a handwriting expert, a man with uncontrolled seizures, and ... Read More
Rating: - Perfect Balance
Muriel Spark is deliciously witty and writes with a lively charm. This does not prevent her from having an extraordinary talent for portraying the monstrously abnormal--to be precise, the diabolical. THE DRIVER'S SEAT, for instance, is overwhelmed by this malevolence--it is an excellent nightmare, but has only small moments of the Spark charm.
THE BACHELORS has a lot of both--the "medium" Patrick is one of Spark's most chilling portraits of evil. The scheming Spiritualists resemble ... Read More
Rating: - Wickedly Funny, As Is The Norm For Ms. Spark
Forgetting that I read this book some years ago, I recently picked up the new edition. Expecting to page through innocently and put the book back on the shelf, I suddenly found myself drawn into this devilish and absorbing tale about spiritual mediums, forgery, betrayal and yes, bachelors. Spark turns her marvelous eye on that group of men who want girls for companionship, but not marriage. This is a sly and yet poignant look at a group of intelligent, but not very bright Londoners circa 1960. I recommend ... Read More
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