Let’s read Edith Wharton’s THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY. It’s one of my favorite books and I’m dying to reread it.

This book is delightful, you’ll love to hate the main character and you won’t be able to put it down.  Shall we discuss September 9th?

Daphne Du Maurier’s classic, REBECCA, is this month’s pick.  If you haven’t read it DO NOT go to Wiki for plot summary. Major spoiler there.  This is a haunting romantic mystery featuring my favorite literary villainess –  the evil Mrs. Danvers.  Let’s discuss on Februrary 25.

I have this fear that nobody read the book.  But just in case any of you did, this is the day that we had set aside to discuss it, so I’ll start.

I chose this book because it’s a favorite of mine and I hadn’t read it in awhile.  Often when I reread books, I pick up on flaws or contrivances that I missed in the first reading, but this book is better, for me, each time I read it.  First, the manner in which Muriel Spark so effortlessly carries the reader into the future and then into the pasts of the “Brodie set” is quite amazing to me.  This is a very difficult thing for a writer to do well.  Instead of describing the girls when they were little, then following them through high school and then revealing the way that each turned out as adults, we are able to view the girls with a sort of retrospective knowledge.  I also like the way Muriel Spark repeats the facts about each character (Mary died in a hotel fire, Rose was famous for sex) for two reasons.  One is a practical one – it helped me remember who was who in this book with many characters and a lot of jumping around.  But also, this is the way we often think about people in our lives.  If you knew a girl quite well in high school, and later learned that she died, in her 20s, in a hotel fire, you would think about that fire every single time you thought of the girl.  It also gave a sort of rhythm to the narrative, almost like a refrain, when referring to each girl.

Though it’s written from an omniscient point of view, the story is really Sandy’s story.  We never really see any of the characters unless they are with Sandy but we are constantly reminded that Sandy has a very limited perspective with those tiny little eyes that she’s always squinting through. I loved it when, later in the book, Miss Brodie tells Sandy to have her eyes examined, as it seems that she’s not able to see, the way she peers at people.  Sandy responds that it only appears that she can’t see people but she actually sees them quite well.  At this point she is already viewing Miss Brodie with a bit of skepticism.

I’m interested in what you all thought.  Feel free to weigh in even if you didn’t finish it or hated it.  What did you all think about the religious aspects of the story – about Sandy’s conversion to Catholicism, her book “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace” and most importantly, the idea of a woman having a “prime.”  I have always loved the character of Jean Brodie, I just love her, and when I love her the most is when she is describing her prime, as if it is a thing.  I have had a few Miss Brodies in my life – wonderfully charismatic and  lovable narcissists whom I once held in very high regard and then came to see as human, with flaws, like the rest of us.