I have to confess that I had no idea that she was still alive, but she died on Thursday aged 88.
It's been a while since I read any of her books, and all the ones I did read I borrowed from the library. Most famous for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but some of her other books made quite an impression on me. I certainly enjoyed Girls of Slender Means and The Ballad of Peckham Rye.
There was a book of hers that I read in the very early Eighties, when I was barely in my teens, about a woman who had to have an orgasm every day and went out trawling the streets for a casual screw. That might have been The Driver's Seat. At that age, and in those days, I was really quite shocked, but I kind of enjoy the thought that somewhere behind the cardiganned-bespectacled stereotypical librarian in my local branch library was the beating heart of a connoisseur of Erotica. Who did nothing to discourage me from reading these and other examples of the genre.
You know, I might just obtain myself a few Muriel Sparks and see how I find them now that I am older and the world has moved on.
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