“Loitering with Intent“ by Muriel Spark - review

 “Loitering with Intent” by Muriel Spark:

The novel was first published in 1981 and is Muriel Spark’s 16th novel. It centers around Fleur Talbot, who lives on ''the grubby edge of the literary world'' in postwar London and tries to write and publish her first book, musing upon ''how wonderful it feels to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century.’’

Fleur has no job and no prospects and little money. She rents a dreary bed-sitting room from a swinish landlord and has an affair with handsome Leslie, the self-centered husband of her friend Dottie. Leslie also has an affair with a male young poet.

Fleur acquires a job as secretary to the Autobiographical Association, the members of which are an eclectic bunch of upper-class twits who meet under the roof and the supervision of Baronet Sir Quentin Oliver to compose their dreary memoirs. 

Then strange and obscure things begin to happen. Fleur starts to notice that the plot of her novel-in-progress seems to presage the activities of Sir Quentin and his pathetic gang. Fiction and reality seem to merge, Fleur's closest friends accuse her of libel and plagiarism, Dottie even steals the only typescript of the novel from her flat. The members of the Association begin to act like the characters in her book and then, as predicted by Fleur's book, they begin to meet untimely deaths.

This is a wise, economic and brilliantly mischievous book, a fine metafictional meditation on the work of writers and the fine line between fiction and reality. Where does art start or reality end?

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