Lisa's Reviews > The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

"Truth is stranger than fiction."

And that is a strange truth indeed considering the amount of strange things Muriel Spark manages to fit into her slim fiction.

Miss Brodie's prime is as strange a phenomenon as they come. She is both modern and traditional, radical and conservative, openminded and protectionist. She is a Natural Fascist in the 1930s, a Scottish schoolmistress by trade but a girl shaper by profession. Give her a girl at an impressionable age, and she will form out of that malleable clay the kind of portrait her heroes Mussolini and Hitler would have burned.

She sneaks into the portraits of one man while taking possession of the eating and sleeping habits of another, but it won't be possible for the desperate Headmistress to get rid of her relying on a sex scandal.

Politics, a mere side interest, will be her downfall, and her Judas will differ from the traditional one in the fact that she does not really feel guilt - one can only betray where loyalty is due, she thinks, and once you look underneath the shiny surface, all narcissists - even those in their prime - look ridiculous.

As stories go, this one sparkles just as much as a glass of vintage champagne.

For the record, though: don't try to achieve Miss Brodie's downfall by checking her drinking habits, she barely shares a half-bottle of sherry with her set of six girls on her birthday. That's it.

Politics, not sex and drugs, will bring her down, unlike most male narcissists, who get away with both fascism and unconventional sex.