The Complete Short Stories. Muriel Spark

      

      'A wholly original presence in modern literature' Andrew Motion

      'My admiration for Spark's contribution to world literature knows no bounds. She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent - the creme de la creme' Ian Rankin

      'One of this [20th] century's finest creators of the comic-metaphysical entertainment' New York Times

      'Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards, decisive as a smashed glass is decisive' John Updike, New Yorker

      'She can be compared to Evelyn Waugh . . . but there's Chekhov here, and a tincture of Stevie Smith . . . polished . . . individual . . . exacting' Daily Telegraph

      'Spark is a natural, a paradigm of that rare sort of artist from whom work of the highest quality flows as elementally as current through a circuit: hook her to a pen and the juice purls out of her' New Yorker

      'It is perhaps her short stories that demonstrate her gifts best: wit, perception, acute characterisation, elegance and precision. They mark her out as one of the finest writers of her generation' Observer

      'Muriel Spark has made herself a mistress at writing stories which seem to trip blithely and bitchily along life's way until the reader is suddenly pulled up with a shock recognition of death and judgment, heaven and hell' London Review of Books

      'All [the stories] are hallmarked with those instantly identifiable Sparkian qualities; brevity, detachment and a sly, sinister wit' Literary Review

      'Dullness is as alien to her as inelegance' New Statesman and Society

Also by Muriel Spark This digital edition published in Great Britain in 2011 by Canongate Books, 14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE

      CONTENTS

       Introduction by Janice Galloway

       The Go-Away Bird

       The Curtain Blown by the Breeze

       Bang-Bang You’re Dead

       The Seraph and the Zambesi

       The Pawnbroker’s Wife

       The Snobs

       A Member of the Family

       The Fortune-Teller

       The Fathers’ Daughters

       Open to the Public

       The Dragon

       The Leaf-Sweeper

       Harper and Wilton

       The Executor

       Another Pair of Hands

       The Girl I Left Behind Me

       Miss Pinkerton’s Apocalypse

       The Pearly Shadow

       Going Up and Coming Down

       You Should Have Seen the Mess

       Quest for Lavishes Ghast

       The Young Man Who Discovered the Secret of Life

       Daisy Overend

       The House of the Famous Poet

       The Playhouse Called Remarkable

       Chimes

       Ladies and Gentlemen

       Come Along, Marjorie

       The Twins

       ‘A Sad Tale’s Best for Winter’

       Christmas Fugue

       The First Year of My Life

       The Gentile Jewesses

       Alice Long’s Dachshunds

       The Dark Glasses

       The Ormolu Clock

       The Portobello Road

       The Black Madonna

       The Thing About Police Stations

       A Hundred and Eleven Years Without a Chauffeur

       The Hanging Judge

       Acknowledgements

      THE SMALLER BIGGER PICTURE

       by Janice Galloway

       They are my own secret rules but they arise from deep conviction. They cannot be formulated, they are as sincere and indescribable as are the primary colours; they are not of a science, but of an art.

      The voice of Lucy, ‘The Fortune Teller’, Muriel Spark

      I met Mrs Spark for the first time in specious surroundings. The place was a television studio where a pilot chat show in the guise of a dinner party hosted by the comedienne Ruby Wax was about to be filmed. I was