![]() Her characters may babble and blather, and her Peckham people more than most, but Spark can describe their body language with the fewest of words. ![]() ![]() Spark's descriptions are often remarkable for their efficiency too. ![]() They make the words on the page rise up and form themselves into a picture. It's such quick sketches I love to come across. After he'd sung the line about waiting at the church, and after he'd been reproved by his wife and the barmaid, each in her own fashion, he took a draught of his bitter with a tremble of the elbow and a turn of the wrist. The old man in the quote above is a good example. While reading this 1960 story, spotting such descriptions became my main focus. While reading some of Spark's other novels, I realised what a fine observer of people's behavior she was, and I began to look forward to her descriptions of characters almost as much as to the stories they found themselves in. I do have a few thoughts about another aspect of this book however. If you're interested in what Muriel Spark can do with such an age-old theme, you can read this short book for yourself. There must be many ballads about brides abandoned at the altar but none of them can be quite as strange as The Ballad of Peckham Rye.Īnd that's pretty much all I have to say about the plot part of this book. ![]() 'There was I,' sang out an old man in the public bar, 'waiting at the church, waiting at the church.' ![]()
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