Resurrected Review: Aiding and Abetting, by Muriel Spark

Review: Aiding and Abetting, by Muriel Spark

by Rich Horton

The recent publication of a biography of the great British novelist Muriel Spark, Electric Spark, by Frances Wilson, has led to some welcome attention to the writer. And it reminds me that I should return to her -- I read about a dozen of her novel some decades ago, and I found them remarkable. My favorites are mostly among her earlier novels, such as Memento Mori (1959), The Girls of Slender Means (1963), and of course The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961); but she was writing first rate novels nearly until her death in 2006. Some of the sheer viciousness of her early novels was a bit dulled in her later works, perhaps, but they remained intriguing and ambiguously dark. Here's something very brief I wrote in 2001 (lightly revised here) about her second to last novel, which appeared in 2000.

Muriel Spark's Aiding and Abetting is another very short novel, at about 36,000 words.  This story is based on the true story of Lord Lucan, a dissolute English Earl who killed his children's nanny by mistake (thinking she was his wife) and then beat his wife, though she escaped.  Lucan fled prosecution, and was never found.  Many people think he is dead, but there were rumours and "Lucan sightings" for decades. Spark did take some liberties with the real life facts of the case in this book. (The crime occurred in 1974 and Lucan was not declared legally dead until 1999, just prior to the publication of Spark's novel.)

Spark creates an unusual psychiatrist named Hildegard Wolf, who has a criminal past of her own (also based on a true story, apparently). Dr. Wolf has a practice in Paris, and she gets two new clients, both of whom claim to be Lord Lucan.  Eventually they use their knowledge of her past as a guard against her exposing them to the police. She is disturbed by this: also she isn't sure which or either of the men may be Lord Lucan. Soon Wolf's lover is also involved in the search for the missing Lord, as are an old acquaintance of Lord Lucan and the daughter of another old friend of his.

These people end up on a merry chase, leading to a very satisfying resolution. The book is written in Spark's usual, very enjoyable, ironic/satiric voice. It is sharply but subtly moralistic about the attitudes of Lucan's class, and about the nature and persistence of guilt.  It is also a thoroughly enjoyable book to read.  Spark was a marvel, and this book, publishe in her early 80s, stands respectably in the company of her best work.