{"id":4181,"date":"2010-07-12T00:01:22","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T04:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=4181"},"modified":"2016-06-17T14:38:46","modified_gmt":"2016-06-17T18:38:46","slug":"muriel-spark-not-to-disturb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/07\/12\/muriel-spark-not-to-disturb\/","title":{"rendered":"Muriel Spark: Not to Disturb<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
Not to Disturb<\/strong><\/em><\/span>\r\nby Muriel Spark (1971)<\/span>\r\nNew Directions (2010)<\/span>\r\n96 pp<\/span><\/pre>\n
Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat<\/a> <\/em>was so strange, so not what I was expecting from the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie<\/a><\/em>, that I couldn’t wait to find out what else she had up her sleeve. There are quite a few to choose from, and unfortunately I don’t see them that often in the bookstores. But New Directions recently\u00a0released a new edition of\u00a0Not to Disturb<\/em> that in its lovely black, matte cover called out to me as I was passing it one day.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Not to Disturb<\/em> (perhaps obviously from its cover) follows Spark’s stranger, more moribund fiction, though I didn’t find it quite as strange as The Driver’s Seat<\/em> . . . still, it’s pretty strange.<\/p>\n
When the book begins, we are thrown into an already ongoing conversation.\u00a0 Several servants are talking about some future event — some future death or murder — as if it has already happened.<\/p>\n
‘Small change,’ he says, ‘compared with what is to come, or has already come, according as one’s philosophy is temporal or eternal. To all intents and purposes, they’re already dead although as a matter of banal fact, the night’s business has still to accomplish itself.’<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There is a meeting about to take place in the library between the home’s regal owner, his wife, and one of his private secretaries.\u00a0They have locked the door from the inside and said they are not to be disturbed. For some reason, these servants are preparing for death.\u00a0How? By arranging their alibis and signing contracts with journalists who will want their personal perspective.\u00a0They think the police and camera crews will show up first thing in the morning, if not sooner.\u00a0By their estimation, the event should occur around 3 o’clock in the morning or maybe 6 o’clock.<\/p>\n
‘I really could sleep,’ she says.\u00a0‘I really feel like another nap.’<\/span><\/p>\n
‘No,’ says Pablo. ‘Lister wants us all to be suffering from shock when the police arrive.\u00a0Lack of sleep has the same effect, Lister says.’<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Brewing underneath that macabre surface are the strange relationships between all of the people. One of the young maids is pregnant, and they don’t know who the father is.<\/p>\n
‘I never went with him,’ says Heloise. ‘I had the chance, though.’<\/span><\/p>\n
‘Didn’t we all?’ says Pablo.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Sex is very much the issue here.\u00a0There are a series of other strange relationships too, and not just among the servants.<\/p>\n
‘Sex is not to be mentioned,’ Lister says. ‘To do so would be to belittle their activities. On their sphere sex is nothing but an overdose of life.\u00a0They will die of it, or rather, to all intents and purposes, have died.\u00a0We treat of spontaneous combustion.\u00a0One remove from sex, as in Henry James, an English American who travelled.’<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Not to Disturb<\/em> is a very short book.\u00a0And it seems everything I can say about it would reveal its secrets, and they are more fun to learn — or, rather, discern —\u00a0from the book itself. The whole book is a lot of fun, even if it is a dark criticism of the upper class and their world, which includes their servants.\u00a0The characters are revealed through incisive dialogue that is almost always evasive (that’s part of the fun).\u00a0However, I didn’t find in it the depth of The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie<\/em> or even of The Driver’s Seat<\/em>.\u00a0Still, it suited my mood perfectly when I read it.\u00a0There is a lot to decipher, interesting people to meet, and Spark fills it with dark comic\u00a0lines like this one.<\/p>\n
‘Death is that sort of thing that you can’t sleep off . . . .’<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I have a lot more Spark to enjoy.\u00a0An exciting prospect considering the fact that I have no idea what to expect next. In a way, it’s the same feeling I get when I anticipate another Aira novel: who knows what is going to be between the covers, but it will be interesting.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trevor reviews Muriel Spark’s Not to Disturb<\/em>. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800,90],"tags":[882,1028,969],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-4181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-muriel-spark","tag-1970s","tag-1028","tag-new-directions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Not-to-Disturb.jpg?fit=347%2C530&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-15r","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4181"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18726,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181\/revisions\/18726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}