October 1960
If one were to look for a thread running through her novels, I suppose it would be that Miss Spark takes account of the devil and is engaged upon denouncing at least some of his works. This time, the story is about the impending trial of a middle-aged spiritualist medium called Patrick Seton on charges of forgery and fraud and its influence upon a collection of people intimately or remotely connected with him. There is a spiritualist group divided by their opinions of his innocence or guilt; his girl, who pregnant and diabetic, could be said to feel that there is no fate like death; and, in and around these, the bachelors, of whom the chief is Ronald Bridges, graphologist, epileptic, and the most affectionately conceived character in this ruthless array.
Among all the cranks, crooks and cretins, he strikes a note of helpless lucidity. His life is curtained by fits and the drugs to alleviate them (as Seton’s is forwarded by his trances and the same drugs to intensify these), and his efforts to retain some consciousness during his convulsions seem to result in his sometimes seeing other people with elemental clarity. At the end of the book, Ronald dismisses these visions ‘until he could think of them again with indifference or amusement or wonder’.
These words seem aptly to describe Miss Spark’s responses to her particular view of people: she is always accurate about what she sees, being blessed with an eye and, above all, an ear for behaviour which is both intricate and precise. Her dispassionate amusement is extremely infectious, but her indifference is alarming, and I, for one, could do with more wonder. As she is one of the very few novelists living whose style is really her own, it may sound carping to demand more of her, but one is always ambitious for those one admires, and if she would stretch her inimitable gifts over a wider emotional range she might make history in her medium.