The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

This Scottish classic by Muriel Spark is definitely as good as everyone says. It's funny, sad, clever and very well written. Miss Jean Brodie is a school teacher in the thirties who assures her students that she is in her "prime", and therefore she has to do what she wants. This includes supporting fascism, embarking on affairs, and manipulating the lives of her students in more and more sinister ways.

There's a couple of clever things that Spark does. One is that she doesn't build up her story in an ordinary chronological way, leading to a climax. She lets you know casually who the "betrayer" is, early on in the piece, and how people will end up dying, and that none of it is going to turn out the way anyone thinks or wants. And yet at the same time she's creating a more and more solid picture of the characters, especially the characters who matter. Even though in the beginning you're introduced to the "Brodie girls" at an older age, it's half-way through before you realise you've been reading all about Sandy.

It's very interesting historically, especially as a piece of Edinburgh history, even apart from the psychology of the characters and the quick, clever plot. The only thing that sucked was the introduction. Usually I enjoy these in the Penguin Classics series; this was terrible, and the woman is obviously an idiot.