📚🚶Introducing our June book
Get to know Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
Dear walking book clubbers,
June! How did we get here already? As Summer begins in earnest, I am excited to read Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark with you - a very playful, sharp and enjoyable little novel.
Read on to find:
Details of our June events, including links to book tickets.
Discussion points to get you thinking about Loitering with Intent
Links to read and listen on.
News of July.
Our June Loitering with Intent events
Please note that for the benefit of your fellow walkers, you need to have read the book before coming along to a walking book club. If you’ve not read the book, you are very welcome to join the zoom instead.
Emily’s Regent’s Park Walking Book Club: Friday 20th June, 12-1.45pm, setting off from Daunt Books, 84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, £8-£20
Emily’s Hampstead Heath Walking Book Club Sunday 22nd June, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £8-£20
Emily’s Zoom Book Club: Monday 23rd June, 8-9pm, £1-£15
Buy Loitering with Intent from Daunt Books HERE and receive 10% off using the code WBC at checkout, or just tell them you’re in Emily’s Walking Book Club if you’re buying it in the shop.
Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
Introduction & Discussion Points
It’s London, 1949, and Fleur Talbot is working on her first novel and short of money. When she gets a secretarial job for the pompous director of the Autobiographical Association and he steals her work-in-progress, life begins to imitate fiction with extremely dangerous results… First published in 1981, this remains one of Spark’s wittiest, most delightful novels; it’s the third by this Scottish minor genius that we’ve discussed in the group.
I feel rather an easy way into this slim but complicated book is to consider it as a book about being a writer. What did you make of Fleur’s experience of writing her novel Warrender Chase? Can you relate to that strange creative experience in which everything feeds into your work and suddenly life and art seem completely mixed up? I think this can happen not just when writing, but also when reading - have you ever read something in a novel and then found exactly the same weird thing happening in real life? (Let’s hope that doesn’t happen in this particular instance!)
Spark was notoriously intrigued by the word “nevertheless”. As in contradiction: one thing happening, but nevertheless, the opposite is also happening. Do you think Fleur Talbot is a nevertheless character? She is our protagonist, who we’re rooting for, but - nevertheless - she can behave quite ruthlessly, such as having an affair with her friend’s husband. What do you think? Perhaps in good fiction (and in real life) everyone is pretty nevertheless.
Spark converted from being half-Jewish to Catholicism, and it feels as though many Catholic ideas are at play here - can some Catholics among us please elaborate?? In all my ignorance, I am particularly intrigued by her description of having “friends almost by predestination”. What do you make of this? Are Fleur’s friends more akin to family, which usually does come by predestination, and which in this novel is notably absent?
Much more discuss, as ever. Hugely looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
More about Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark, photographed here by Stephen Hyde in 1984, just three years after Loitering with Intent was published, wrote a staggering 22 novels (LwI was her 16th), as well as short-stories, poems, a memoir, journalism and essays.
Do read THIS brilliant New Statesman long read by Leo Robson, which gives a terrific overview of Spark, her life and work.
HERE is a fantastic personal piece by Jenny Turner for the Guardian that explores some of the themes in Loitering with Intent. I especially love her comparison with Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. And HERE is an intriguing review from the New York Times, when it was first published.
The novel, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1981, was chosen as the Booker’s Book of the Month a couple of years’ ago. You can listen to their podcast about it HERE, but I do think one of the pundits could have been a bit more enthusiastic! They also put together THIS lovely collection of clips of Muriel Spark speaking about her work over the years - enjoy.
Finally, if you enjoyed Loitering, do read some of her other novels. A Far Cry from Kensington was the very first walking book club pick, back in 2012 (!), and we also had a brilliant discussion about The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie about five years’ ago. Memento Mori and The Girls of Slender Means are also great - I’m sure you’ve all got your own favourites too. And if you are after more about her rather extraordinary life (much of which provided the inspiration - or not! - for some of her books) do have a read of Martin Stannard’s biography (which I recently read - well deduced, Lisa, on Instagram!).
📚🚶July ** tickets now on sale **
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Anne Elliot seems to have resigned herself to living off her memories since, eight years’ ago, she dutifully broke off her engagement to a naval captain lacking in fortune, ancestry, and prospects. Then, when Anne encounters Captain Wentworth once again, she must learn to follow her own judgement amidst a sea of influence. The 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth is the perfect time to read her final novel.
Curious to know more? You might enjoy watching Miranda Mills’ Comfort Book Club episode on it, HERE.
Emily’s Regent’s Park Walking Book Club: Friday 18th July, 12-1.45pm, setting off from Daunt Books, 84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, £8-£20
Emily’s Hampstead Heath Walking Book Club Sunday 20th July, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £8-£20
Emily’s Zoom Book Club: Monday 21st July, 8-9pm, £1-£15
AND also at The Idler Festival, on Friday 11th July, 4-6pm, setting off from Fenton House, Hampstead. Full details and tickets for the full weekend of delightful literary entertainment HERE.
Buy Persuasion from Daunt Books HERE and receive 10% off using the code WBC at checkout, or just tell them you’re in Emily’s Walking Book Club if you’re buying it in the shop.
Happy reading,
Emily