Book Review: The Bachelors is not my favorite of Muriel Spark's novels, but being by Muriel Spark it is well worth reading and re-reading. Spark writes for the head as well as the heart, and this one spends more time with the cerebral. Our bachelors are all a bit selfish, somewhat neurotic, a little lost, weak, having too much time on their hands and not enough meat or meaning in their lives. As always with her novels, Spark is writing about morality, even as she notes the mundane details of life such as buying spices at Fortnum's. And as usual there is quite a lot about religion in general and Catholicism in particular, interaction between a group of seemingly unconnected characters, inner lives and fraught decisions, evil, and varying levels of good. Here is added spiritualism and quite a bit about the nature of bachelorhood. Yet everything is buried in layers of the everyday, as though daring the reader to find her deeper thoughts beneath the meandering, minimal plot, and wry incisive writing. Although The Bachelors is not my favorite, there is little I could say as to why that is so -- it's still written with her keen observation and dry wit. I doubt I will ever find a Muriel Spark novel that isn't worth reading, and in this one I felt the opportunity of seeing a little of Spark herself come through. Always a strong, independent woman, often single and always attractive to men, Spark appears to pass judgment on a certain class of men of her acquaintance, and finds them wanting. Maybe that's just me. Or maybe a helpful biographer could identify which of these characters actually were in Spark's life. Just idle curiosity ... . [3½★]
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