Book Review: The Abbess of Crewe is a thin blooded cabbage, its many ideas left on the vine for the reader to ripen. One of the lesser of Spark's 22 novels: little happens, little is developed, little is resolved, and it's well padded. But it's short (despite the padding), endlessly intriguing, and even when the subject is nuns Muriel Spark can write like the devil. She doesn't seem heavily invested here, but the writing is as always first rate and intelligence peeks out from every line. More cleverness in a paragraph than most authors can pack into a chapter. The title character, Sister Alexandra, is strong and irresistible, reminiscent of Miss Jean Brodie herself. We don't really like what she does, but we root for her nonetheless. Most of the story rests on the character of Sister Alexandra, regardless of her actions she carries the whole weight of the book, the plot and other characters become secondary. We should be cheering for the self-actualizing (and aptly named) Sister Felicity, but she becomes the villain of the piece. The Abbess of Crewe has been called "an allegorical treatment of the Watergate scandal." While that tawdry episode was an influence, indeed the seed from whence it grew, the novel is far more interesting apart from the allegory, making possible parallels ultimately unpersuasive. Sister Alexandra is no Richard Nixon, scheming though she is. Instead she intertwines art, mythology, and Catholicism. She recites English poetry rather than devotions; "we have entered the realm of mythology," she says; the Church is the microcosm of the world. All of this is laid out by Spark in The Abbess of Crewe, leaving it to the reader to perfect the ideas introduced. [3½★]
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