It is not because we are rats that we tend to abandon people who are down, it is because we are embarrassed.

This is one of the middle/late novels by Muriel Spark. In this novel, our narrator finds herself embroiled in a publication scandal and involved in the publication of a complete hack writer. She constantly (and probably over does it) refers to this write as a pisseur de copie, meaning a writer who churns out rubbish. Anyway, she is fired and must look for work in a new part of town, in a less reputable publishing company, and hence the title of the novel. The novel circulates around the scandal and her relationship with the different figures of her life.

The book itself is a pretty modest book in general, and it has charm and some interesting insight into the world of publishing. It reminds me in some ways of Penelope Fitzgerald’s writing, as well as some of the better parts of books like The Silkworm or The Bookshop. It’s relatively limited in that way too. I find it be a little anemic compared to a lot of other Muriel Spark books, especially The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Mememto Mori, and Girls of Slender Means, and later as a I read other books of hers from the 1980s, especially Loitering with Intent and The Finishing School, I kind of figured she had ‘lost it” as a writer.

One thing the novel does well is it situates us within a literary world of the 1950s and especially around the publication of Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, a book I mostly like, but a writer I mostly don’t. More to the point though is that this novel launched the institution of Kingsley Amis into the world of British publishing, and I like having Spark’s wit and insight telling us a little more about what that was like. This book also I think launches me back into the world of mean mid-century British ladies I adore, so prepare for more.

(Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Far_Cry_from_Kensington)