Pages: 224
Original date of publication: 1981
My copy: 2001 (New Directions)
Why I decided to read:
How I acquired my copy: Joseph Fox bookstore, Philadelphia,
January 2012
The novel opens on a summer day in 1949, when Fleur Talbot,
an aspiring writer at work on a novel called Warrender Chase, get a job as
typist for an “Autobiographical Association” that promises to save the memoirs
of its illustrious members for a period of 70 years. As she gains material for
her novel (and subsequent novels), Fleur begins to suspect that Sir Quentin,
its head, is blackmailing its members. What ensues is a bizarre, funny take on
the idea that “truth is stranger than fiction.” The phrase “to loiter with
intent” is used in a humorous sense to describe anyone who is waiting around
for an unspecified purpose. The whole tone of the novel is like this, in some
ways; you get the sense that our narrator and the other characters are hanging
around, waiting for something to happen.
Muriel Spark’s novels won’t appeal to everyone. She was
famously detached from (and sometimes brutal to) other people in her personal
life, and she has the same attitude towards the characters in her novels, even
this one, where the book is written in the first person. But I think she also
has to be—Spark’s focus is on human existence and interaction as a whole, so
she doesn’t get too deeply invested in her characters. As a result, there are
some really great quotes in the book, such as “Contradictions in human
character are one of its most consistent notes.” It’s that detachment from her
characters that allows Spark to paint a full picture of them. Spark’s novels
are characterized by observations of deceit and the use and abuse of power. As
with novels like Aiding and Abetting, Spark proves that these kinds of things
sometimes happen in some of the most bizarre circumstances.
Loitering With Intent is somewhat autobiographical; set around
the time that Spark began to write, it captures very well a first-time author’s
attempts to get published—a secondary theme to the novel in how it explores the
edge of London literary life in the late 1940s/early1950s.
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