by Alison Clark

Loitering with Intent’ by Muriel Spark features a young writer, Fleur Talbot, who takes a job as secretary to the Autobiographical Association, ‘a gathering of eccentric egomaniacal upper-class twits’ according to the cover blurb. The novel Fleur is writing begins spookily to prefigure the activities and dramas of the Association. To that extent this is a novel about writing and contains pithy observations about the process.

Spark’s tone is dry, cool and sparkling: ‘I...went to find at the door the red-faced houseboy with a bunch of amber roses and behind him the daily cleaner, whose unwanted services were thrown in with the rent, in her pink dress and white apron. It was a colourful ensemble.’ She is not the kind of writer to carry us away on a whirlwind of crime or romance but if you love words deftly and wittily deployed, go to Spark.