Word: sparking
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Only Problem, Muriel Spark's latest novel, slides by with the elegant concision of a parable. Spark's economical narration, piercing judgment, and marvelous ear give her story the easy-to-watch quality of a cartoon, while the explicit statement of her concerns evokes a depth which is left for the reader to supply. Reading her novel is like looking at the reflections on the surface of a slow, but full and moving stream...
Nothing could be simpler than Spark's subject, Harvey and Effie Gotham's marriage. Harvey is a rich man who doesn't have to work and who spends his abundant leisure time studying the Book of Job, on which he is preparing an essay. The problem of why suffering exists is, for him, the only problem. Effie is a generous-spirited but angry woman, an antinomian who feels that her anger at the excesses and errors of capitalism means that she does not have to abide by the rules--anyone's rules...
...Spark's story is the narration of the break-up of this marriage. Harvey and Effie part ways abruptly when Effie reveals to Harvey that she has just stolen two chocolate bars. This peccadillo, superadded to other problems in the marriage--Effie married Harvey for his money, has had frequent affairs, and disagrees with him on most important things--causes their separation. Harvey retires to a village in France to continue his work on Job. Effie takes a lover, has a baby, drops her lover, and, having taken another, becomes a terrorist. Her activities for the Front de la Liberation...
...Spark's novel, the fruit of a simple but profound analysis, reveals how easily a love which is not tending to perfection or at least to improvement can be perverted to supply the energy for a really malicious hatred. Effie and Harvey are attracted to each other because they are, in some sense, opposites. He admires her for her uselessness, even while criticizing the impractical applications of her idealism. Effie, on the other hand, finds Harvey quite useful. Effie uses Harvey efficiently and thoroughly, employing his house for her affairs and trying, after the split, to get a large divorce...
...later Spark reveals that, however much Harvey objects, "The thought that Effie was a member of a terrorist band now excited Harvey sexually." Though Harvey and Effie are still in love with each other, they exaggerate their individual characteristics--Harvey with the Book of Job, Effie with a machine gun--in an attempt to prove how really separate they...