I aim to startle as well as please, Muriel Spark has said, and in these
eight marvelous ghost stories she manages to do both to the highest
degree. As with all matters in the hands of Dame Muriel her spooks are
entirely original. A ghost in her pantheon can be plaintive or a bit
vengeful, or perhaps may not even be aware of being a ghost at all. One
in fact is the ghost of a man who isn't even dead yet. Another takes the
bus home from work, believing she is still alive, though she is haunted
by an odious tune stuck in her head (which her murderer had been
relentlessly humming), and distressed by a feeling of incompletion. And
a reflective ghost recalls her mortal days of enjoying the glory of the
world, as if it would never pass. Spark has a flair for confiding
ghosts: I must explain that I departed this life nearly five years ago.
But I did not altogether depart this world. There were those odd things
still to be done which one's executors can never do properly. In her
case the odd things include cheerily hailing her murderer, Hallo George!
and driving him mad. The remarkably nonchalant stories here include some
of her most wicked and famousThe Seraph and the Zambesi, The Hanging
Judge, and The Portobello Roadand they all gleam with that special Spark
sheen, the quality The Times Literary Supplement has hailed as
gloriously witty and polished.
