There was something disconcerting about the modernity of ‘The Finishing School’, as it has precisely the same tone as [b:The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie|517188|The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie|Muriel Spark|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1379598918s/517188.jpg|6132856] and [b:The Driver's Seat|668282|The Driver's Seat|Muriel Spark|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348828782s/668282.jpg|2776383], yet the characters send emails. It was published in 2004 and is presumably set then. I wouldn’t say that Spark’s tone is ill-suited to the 21st century, just that it surprised me. I enjoyed her arch omniscience, in this case focused on a mildly dubious finishing school run by a married couple. As the husband fails to write a novel, he becomes obsessed with a pupil who is successfully doing so. Meanwhile his wife is tired of her life and preparing to leave. Although I appreciated the stylishness and aplomb of the narrative very much, I felt that the novella gave the reader only a glimpse of events. While amusing, this was also a little unsatisfying. The final pages recount what subsequently happened to each main character yet, unlike the two prior Spark novels, I couldn’t easily connect these fates to the incidents recounted. Possibly the larger cast was a factor? In any event, I love Spark’s distinctively arch writing but didn’t find this particular novella very memorable. ( )

Rowland and Nina run a small finishing school, which moves almost yearly just ahead of its outstanding bills. They offer a varied curriculum suitable for teenage boys and girls, scions of wealthy families, on the verge of becoming whomever it is they might become and requiring just a touch of finishing to, so to speak, finish them off. Perhaps unsurprisingly one of the favourite classes offered is Rowland’s creative writing course. That and Nina’s comme il faut class, where they learn such tidbits as, in England, to eat asparagus with one’s fingers.

Chris is a red-haired student and, possibly, a genius. Or at least he is a writer who actually writes, unlike Rowland, who has been blocked on his novel for several years. Almost inevitably, Rowland develops an unhealthy envy of Chris’ productivity. And Chris develops an unhealthy need for Rowland’s envy. Nina just wants to find an intelligent, scholarly man she can devote herself to (Rowland having failed her in that regard). And the other students and staff have equally complicated hopes and histories all of which weave a tapestry worthy of a Lausanne wall. Situations ensue.

Well into her 80s, Muriel Spark’s last novel is just as sparkling and outlandish as those of her youth. Her characters are intriguing, her situations almost absurd, and the whole concoction a frothy delight.

Easily and gently recommended. ( )

Jealousy, obsession, sex. There's never a boring moment in a Spark.

Being her last book and published on this side of the new millennium, it was occasionally jarring when the novel makes a relatively modern reference. It also feels a bit more "resolved" than her other books. Moreover, I couldn't stop thinking about this tweet while I was reading. Recommended for the Spark enthusiast, but not as a debut. ( )

Another very short, highly-packed book, in which the author hardly seems to be doing any work at all: most of the stories happen offstage and are merely hinted at in passing whilst the book appears to run on along its enjoyable trajectory by momentum alone. A nice trick if you can do it: Spark had had quite a bit of practice by the time she got this far.

Nina and Rowland run a small, unconventional school in Switzerland where rich parents can park their teenagers for a year or so. Rowland is also a writer, trying to complete his first novel, but he's unsettled by a growing obsession with one of his students, the 17-year-old Chris, who is writing an historical novel about Mary Queen of Scots and apparently making much better progress than Rowland. Chris's extreme youth and his red hair are already starting to arouse the interest of publishers, to Rowland's fury.

Spark in her eighties and with more than twenty novels behind her is having fun playing around with ideas about the difficulty of putting pen to paper, but there's also a lot of play with language that goes with the other end of the career - "finishing", "polishing off" and so on. And there are echoes of the writing-and-mental-health theme from The Comforters, and obviously allusions to the form and subject-matter of The prime of Miss Jean Brodie, right down to the final pages where she does a round-up of what has happened to all the students since. Plenty of dark themes lurking in the distance, but the mood is full of upbeat optimism. These young people might be lacking in all kinds of taste and values, but they more than make up for it by being so young and ready to enjoy life.

Sometimes novels written in extreme old age are a bit of an embarrassment, but this is one that makes you wish Spark had had time for a few more. ( )

breezy and swift, though aside from its ascerbic humor it had lacked gravity. The Finishing School was a Murdochian sketch pushed forward slightly into realization. The time twisted totems of education and affection pull up short of Don't Stand So Close To Me. ( )

The Finishing School is cellophane thin volume of cellophane sensibilities and cellophane merit. Here is a work of airy, meretricious smuggery with no plenty of surface fireworks but no inner spark, which is to say no heart. ( )

"When you finish at College Sunrise you should be really and truly finished," Nina told the girls. "Like the finish on a rare piece of furniture. Your jumped-up parents (may God preserve their bank accounts) will want to see something for their money."

I picked this up at the library earlier this week, as I like the author's books and haven't read this one before. It turns out that this was Muriel Spark's last novel and was published in 2004, so the chararacters have personal computers and watch Sky News, although the setting, in Rowland and Nina's finishing school on the bank of a Swiss lake, seems old fashioned. It is a short and amusing tale, but not much happens except for Rowland's increasing jealousy of their pupil Chris, who is there to write a novel and seems to be breezing through the process, while Rowland is struggling to get to grips with his own book. ( )

This is related to The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie only in that it's set in a school. Much less political, much more fun. ( )

A mention in James Wood's [b:How Fiction Works|1355465|How Fiction Works|James Wood|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1312030908s/1355465.jpg|1345179] prompted me to pick up a couple Sparks from the library. Of course the mention was of [b:The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie|517188|The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie |Muriel Spark|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1307465236s/517188.jpg|6132856], but that wasn't on the shelves. Instead I got The Finishing School, which turned out to be her last novel. She was in her mid 80s when she wrote it.

Does that mean it's a fuddy-duddy prim tale of old-fashioned people fighting to teach the kids (the kids these days!) how to be prim and old-fashioned? Hardly. Rowland and Nina run "College Sunrise," a scattershot affair of only 9 students currently located on the shores of Lake Geneva. The major plot involves Rowland's desultory attempts to write a novel and their derailment by his jealousy in the face of 17-year-old student Chris' seeming success in the same pursuit. Students sleep with gardeners, teachers sleep with locals, authors sleep with publishers: everything happens in this book except any indication of actual education being imparted or received. Well, education in the school of life, perhaps.

In length and (lack of) heft it's really a novella, and the prose is so simple and sparse that it feels even lighter still. But in that same simplicity it approaches the abstraction of [a:Henry Green|16649|Henry Green|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1294741307p2/16649.jpg]. Good fun, and I'm sure I'll be reading more of Muriel Spark in the future. ( )

Little more than a short story really. And while short stories have a habit of driving me bananas, possibly because they tend to come in books containing one good yarn and ten substandard ones, I enjoyed this standalone one. It's about the symbiotic relationship between aspiring novelist Rowland, currently running a anachronistic kind of modern day co-educational finishing school, and his student Chris, an actually-getting-on-with-it novelist, with a cast of other odd characters getting in the way from time to time. I gave up expecting sense out of Muriel Spark's stories years ago, sometimes you get sense but on the whole they are the kind of thing you just surf along with and get entertained by, and never expect a sensible ending! ( )

The Finishing School of the title is College Sunrise, a small, unconventional, and borderline disreputable school run by aspiring novelist Rowland Mahler and his wife Nina. Their star pupil is Chris Wiley, a self-confident 17-year-old who is writing a historical novel about Mary Queen of Scots. Rowland, who is suffering from writer's block, reads bits of Chris's novel and finds it alarmingly good. Sexual and professional jealousy spur Rowland to the brink of a nervous breakdown.

This novella is short and certainly not sweet; it is mostly tartly funny. It's a slight piece of work; the characters other than Rowland and Chris are thinly sketched, but the good writing and the narrator's biting authorial asides make for very good entertainment. I've never read Muriel Spark, and I'll certainly read her again. ( )

Honestly, I'm not sure that Muriel Spark is for me. I kind of remember liking The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie but I read it many years ago so I can't honestly say. I still have it around and have considered a re-read but just haven't gotten around to it. When I read Memento Mori two years ago, I thought there were moments of wit and intelligence but wasn't in love with it. And then this one rubbed me the wrong way from start to finish. I didn't care for any of the characters, the plot was a bit scattered and some of the "issues" seemed contrived and/or half-hearted.

http://webereading.com/2010/07/you-begin-he-said-by-setting-your-scene.html ( )

Reliable Muriel Spark, with her understated tone and gentle slyness. ( )

It is perhaps ironic that the main selling point of Chris's novel, in the story 'The Finishing School', is that he himself is only seventeen and redheaded. I say ironic, because, as charming as this little volume sometimes is, I think it was only published because Muriel Spark's name is attached and she is now a sprightly 87 years old.

One of the 'testimonials' on the inside cover suggests that this is a more humourous, more human version of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie', but it most certainly is not. 'Brodie' was a masterpiece; this is the work of an aging writer keen to see one more volume printed.

Is 'The Finishing School' worth reading? Only if you're a die-hard Muriel Spark fan, or a completist wanting to read her entire canon. I'm both, I suppose. The story, about the jealousy and rivalry between a young amateur writer and a creative writing lecturer struggling to finish his own novel, has been done before, many, many times. The story doesn't work very well, and the characters are never as convincing as they usually are in a Spark novel.

Fortunately I managed to get through this work in a fistful of hours, but I was always thinking about those other Spark novels that I've come to love so much. She's a talented writer, but sadly her prime has passed. ( )

Short book, quick read. Good story. ( )

While the news reviews range from A to F on this last novel of Muriel Spark, I found it just as entertaining as her others. It is sharp where it needs to be and the story, while lighter than air, is still integral to the finale. Enjoy! ( )

A swift, blithe comedy of sexual and creative jealousy plays out on the grounds of a dubious finishing school in Dame Spark's gem of a novel, her 22nd. College Sunrise, founded by would-be novelist Rowland Mahler and his practical wife, Nina Parker, is a mobile institution (currently situated in Lausanne) at which very little of use is taught. Rowland does preside over a popular creative writing class (with five students, it boasts more than half the school's enrollment), while Nina takes care of the office business and dispenses delicious advice in her informal etiquette seminars ("[I]f you, as a U.N. employee, are chased by an elephant stand still and wave a white handkerchief. This confuses the elephant's legs"). Trouble arrives in the form of redheaded, 18-year-old Chris Wiley, who has come to College Sunrise to work on his novel about Mary, Queen of Scots. Chris's authorial insouciance--he is supremely confident of his talents and rather dismissive of historical fact--infuriates Rowland, whose ego was inflated by minor early successes and who has a terrible case of writer's block. Rowland becomes obsessed with the novel and its creator, and their struggle--" 'I could kill him,' thought Rowland. 'But would that be enough?' "--forms the heart of the book, even as other players, sketched briefly but brilliantly (the "tall and lonely" Tilly, princess of an unknown and perhaps fictitious country; the sweet, stupid Mary Foot, who wants to own a "sahramix" [sic] shop) fall in and out of love and beds. Spark, who is 86, writes in a polished, rather old-fashioned tone but this is a cool, delightful little book of bad deeds and good manners.

Muriel Spark wows me every time. Hooray for writers like her! The story is masterful, and oh, so subtle. If no one's planning a movie for this one yet, they definitely should. ( )

Nothing really happens in the novel...boring! ( )

This is a delightful little book, witty and somtimes cruel. It is truly amazing given the author's age that she can turn out a book of this quality. The Tatler described it as "An exploration of teenage homosexuality, attempted murder, jealousy, adultery, all dealt with in the most polite and darkly comic way."
In fact it is more about jealousy and obsession as opposed to teenage homosexuality. It is the jealousy and obsession which is the heart of the story which you know as you read is going to end up very badly. But how? Read it and find out.
It all takes place in a small finishing school in Switzerland. ( )

Thin and barely nourishing, this is nevertheless a readable book by a prolific and important first rate British author, and apparently her last finished novel. ( )

http://dhamel.typepad.com/book_blog/2004/12/the_finishing_s.html ( )

A delicious little book! Light, fizzy, impish fun. Muriel Spark has a sublime writing gift, the ability to paint an entire scene in a few well chosen words. And in the art of gentle irony she is a supreme master (mistress?). ( )

The Finishing School is cellophane thin volume of cellophane sensibilities and cellophane merit. Here is a work of airy, meretricious smuggery with no plenty of surface fireworks but no inner spark, which is to say no heart. ( )

The Finishing School is cellophane thin volume of cellophane sensibilities and cellophane merit. Here is a work of airy, meretricious smuggery with no plenty of surface fireworks but no inner spark, which is to say no heart. ( )