The Finishing School by Muriel Spark (2004)

A creative writing teacher (and frustrated novelist) at a marginal finishing school becomes obsessed with a 17-year-old student, who is writing a soon-to-be-published novel.

Book Review:  I'm not ashamed to say that I love Muriel Spark and will read anything she writes, including her shopping lists. The Finishing School was Muriel Spark's final novel and, sadly, not her best. As with all her books, the plot is a switch from previous books, but here the characters are thinly developed, the story line limited, and there is little happening below the surface.  In my worship of Spark, I can still appreciate The Finishing School for its clever sentences and pointed humor, e.g., Nina's lessons on Ascot and the U.N.  A Muriel Spark novel is to be enjoyed in the moment, to be impressed with her sharp wit and keen observation.  Almost as if the story is beside the point, simply a vehicle to display her immense skills.  But here she seems tired, as if she no longer had the energy to develop the story as she wanted to write it.  There is a jealous older writer and a confident younger novelist, a wife, sex partners, quirky other students, Catholicism (as usual).  I can see the skeleton of the planned book, of characters she would have made more rounded and the plot lines she would have expanded, but there's just not enough here to make this a first class book, especially a first class Spark book. Cleverness, acuity, intelligence, wit: that is what her books are made of; she must have been an amazing person.  At 181 pages I had no difficulty completing this book, I'm glad I read it, and I'd read it again simply because I enjoy bathing in her writing.  But my carefully considered advice is to skip The Finishing School for now.  If you want to read Muriel Spark, first read A Far Cry from Kensington, The Comforters, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means, The Driver's Seat.  If you enjoy those, go on to read her other books.  If having read the majority of her books you find yourself, like me, a Muriel Spark completist, then come back and read The Finishing School.  If you do I hope, like me, you will enjoy it for the best of what she did, and not grieve about what she failed to do. [3 Stars]