Graham Greene
wrote to tell Spark that this was her best book since Memento Mori (as he was to do with several later titles as well).
Greene, Graham. Graham Greene. A Life in Letters. Editor Greene, Richard, Alfred A. Knopf.
309-10
Reviews were mixed, many sounding baffled. While admirers...
Literary responses
Muriel Spark
Ivy Compton-Burnett
, who always disliked religious sentiment and religious writing, was severe on MS
. She described her early novels as Not at all good. . . . I don't like novels that tell...
Literary responses
Marina Warner
This amazingly complex novel received very positive reviews in Britain. Helen Dunmore
in The Times called the plot huge and vigorous and the novel rewarding, incisive and topical.
Marina Warner: Novelist and Mythographer. http://www.marinawarner.com.
Times Literary Supplement reviewer Ruth Scurr
Literary responses
Jane Gardam
The TLS reviewer, Ruth Scurr
, used as yardstick for this novel Kipling
's writings about his parallel childhood trauma and experience of evil (related in the story Baa Baa Black Sheep).
Ruth Scurr
, reviewing this book for the Times Literary Supplement, detected in its first paragraph a flash of the steely impatience that MSdirects at flawed humanity.
Scurr, Ruth. “Sins against the Holy Spirit”. Times Literary Supplement, pp. 21-2.
21
While most reviews were respectful,...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Scurr, Ruth. “All Change, by Elizabeth Jane Howard, review”. The Telegraph.
Scurr, Ruth. “Dreams Must Explain Themselves by Ursula K Le Guin review—writing and the feminist fellowship”. theguardian.com.
Scurr, Ruth. “Sins against the Holy Spirit”. Times Literary Supplement, pp. 21-2.
Scurr, Ruth. “Underlinings”. London Review of Books, pp. 38-9.