150 pages
English language
Published June 18, 1999 by Perennial Classics.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a novel by Muriel Spark, the best known of her works. It first saw publication in The New Yorker magazine and was published as a book by Macmillan in 1961. The character of Miss Jean Brodie brought Spark international fame and brought her into the first rank of contemporary Scottish literature. In 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie No. 76 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
This is a deceptively simple novel, written with a lot of craft under the hood. The narrative structure flips back and forth across time, which has the effect of hanging the story on a constellation of perspectives for the privileged reader. Everything about this novel is well written, especially its title. I found it poignant, emotionally resonant, and very entertaining to read.
I'd seen the movie when I was a kid on the late show and while it wasn't great it had interesting enough things going on in it that I wanted to read the book.
There seemed to be many movies about school teachers in the 1960s. To Sir With Love, Up the Down Staircase, Goodbye Mr. Chips, The Trouble with Angels. Not all movies succeeded, and most critics agreed that Miss Brodie didn't, but the book is a good one.
This book feels more like a short story than like a novel. Set in Edinburgh, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" jumps back and forth between Miss Brodie and her students when they are 11 (and then 12, 15, 18, as the story progresses) and Miss Brodie's and the girls' futures (which are all surprising and glum to varying degrees). While there is a story, what I found most interesting about the book is that it captures the pre-WW2 feel. It is a comment on fascism as much as a story about girls and their beloved teacher. To read more about the book, visit my blog right here: outsideofacat.wordpress.com/2014/06/24/lets-not-talk-about-sex-baby-the-prime-of-miss-jean-brodie/
