For years I’ve had the goal of reading all of Muriel Spark’s books, and though I’ve read several, there are still many I haven’t gotten to yet. So I was excited to see an Instagram user put together a schedule to read one Spark novel per month, chronologically, starting in January 2026. I figured I might as well join in.

First up: The Comforters, Spark’s debut novel, first published in 1957. I’d never really heard anyone talk about this book before, so my expectations were modest. But this was so good! And it was also so unmistakably Muriel Spark.

The Comforters begins by introducing us to Laurence Manders, a young man who, while staying for a time with his grandmother, starts to suspect that she is involved in a local smuggling operation. We also meet his girlfriend, Caroline Rose, a writer who has recently converted to Catholicism and is struggling with a strange disturbance. Caroline begins to hear the clicking of a typewriter followed by disembodied voices that narrate not her actions or thoughts but rather the lines of the very novel we are reading. She doesn’t like it: “I intend to stand aside and see if the novel has any real form apart from this artificial plot. I happen to be a Christian.”

That’s just a sampling of the strange things going on.

Caroline recognizes that everything happening is just a bit too weird (I mean, come on — whose grandma is part of a smuggling ring?), and so she begins to suspect that they are all characters in a book, and that she, somehow, is hearing the author at work.

In classic Spark fashion, she doesn’t hold our hand as we watch a fascinating (and often very funny) exploration of faith and fate unfold.

I’m more excited than ever about this project and can’t wait to see what February’s selection, Robinson, has in store.