Authors Similar to Muriel Spark

March 24, 2005 11:42 AM

If I like the works of Muriel Spark, who else would I like?

I'm looking for books that have a reasonably controlling author who doesn't feel the need to tell you everything. Something minimalist-ish, but without the muted epiphany of "tea-towel" realism. Slim and dense. I also enjoy the way Spark tells you what the "ending" is early in the story, and thus the momentum is not what happens, but how.

posted by dame to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

thus the momentum is not what happens, but how

I've never read this Muriel Sparks character, but if you like the how it happens rather than the what, then I suggest the two books by Donna Tartt The Secret History and The Little Friend, not slim by any stretch of the imagination, but dense and stunningly engaging reads.
posted by jodic at 11:50 AM on March 24, 2005

The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard. Rich but understated.

I think Donna Tartt may be too dense and overblown for you if you want something kind of minimal.
posted by matildaben at 11:57 AM on March 24, 2005

Gnooks: Muriel Sparks
posted by scazza at 12:02 PM on March 24, 2005

(I meant "Spark." Sorry. The links still work.)
posted by scazza at 12:03 PM on March 24, 2005

I always imagine Muriel Spark as Ian McEwan's well travelled grandmother.

Also, have you ever read W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz?
posted by felix betachat at 12:06 PM on March 24, 2005

I feel odd that I didn't explain what Gnooks is. It's a mapping system that maps how close authors are to each other. The more they overlap, the more they overlap in style/content/whatever. As you see on Spark's map, McEwan in a bit away but not overlapping. There is a whole group overlapping with her which includes Andrew Holeran and Edmund White. Hopefully this will help.
posted by scazza at 12:20 PM on March 24, 2005

Response by poster: Scazza, thanks. The site is interesting, but I'm dubious about the methodology. They have John Barth pretty close, and I cannot stand to read more that two sentences by that man. However, there are others I do enjoy on there too, so maybe it's picking up on something I don't notice the two sharing.
posted by dame at 12:32 PM on March 24, 2005

I'm dubious about the methodology

Ugh. Yes. Robert Pirsig? If you want your pseudo-philosophy cut with literature, couldn't you at least read Iris Murdoch?
posted by felix betachat at 12:38 PM on March 24, 2005

I love Muriel Spark's fiction, too.

Second Ian McEwan. Beryl Bainbridge, John Banville, Pat Barker (the Regeneration trilogy), and Peter Carey also come to mind.
posted by thomas j wise at 12:58 PM on March 24, 2005

Peter Carey seconded.
That said, I find this sort of question tricky, and all but impossible to answer satisfactorily with any sort of regularity (it comes up a lot in my line of work, you see). Who's to say you'll like another author who does the same sorts of things dear Muriel does, but maybe does them differently or not as well? I reckon it might be a bit like saying you love violin concertos and having Charlie Daniels recommended to you.
Also: I love me some John Barth, so you may not be able to trust me.
posted by willpie at 2:22 PM on March 24, 2005

scazza, that's a fascinating site. I definitely don't always agree but it's really interesting. Arundhati Roy (bleah) is given for Virginia Woolf (brilliant), and so is Hegel (huh?)... and interestingly, practically everyone surrounding Houellebecq is a philosopher, not a novelist, which is interesting to me. I mean, he's philosophical, but I didn't think so much more so than others.

Seems to be lots of randomness, and some terrible misspellings, which make me wonder who's entering the info, but it's a great idea.

Sorry for interrupting. I've never read Muriel Spark so am no help here.
posted by mdn at 8:21 PM on March 24, 2005

Best answer: The two names that immediately spring to mind are Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell: Waugh as a novelist who keeps a tight grip on his narrative but forces you to read between the lines when it comes to discerning his characters' thoughts and motivations; Powell as a novelist for whom, as you say, what happens is far less important than how.

You might care to look at some of the other British novelists writing in the 1950s and 1960s: Ivy Compton Burnett (minimalism pushed to extremes); Sybille Bedford (A Legacy, a neglected masterpiece), early Iris Murdoch (Under the Net), J.R. Ackerley (We Think The World Of You). None of these writers quite fit in the 'if-you-like-Muriel-Spark-you'll-love-this' category, but they all have certain qualities in common with Spark: a fastidious sense of style, a talent for social comedy, a habit of leaving things unstated.

If you want something more recent, you could try the novels of Alison Lurie, or Emma Tennant's memoir Girlitude, which has a crisp, acerbic tone that reminds me of Spark. I second thomas j wise's suggestion of Beryl Bainbridge: the early novels (Harriet Said, The Bottle Factory Outing) are very Spark-ish in tone. Or, in the same line of black comedy, Caroline Blackwood; or the late Alice Thomas Ellis, though her novels were never much to my taste.
posted by verstegan at 9:42 AM on March 25, 2005