The Bachelors

The Bachelors displays the best of Sparkian satire, placing her at the heart of a great literary tradition alongside Waugh and Trollope, Wilde and Wodehouse. It demands rediscovery.

"It's easy to see why Waugh admired The Bachelors. On one level, it is a blithely carnivorous satire in the Waugh mould. The bachelors of the title – almost the only men we meet in the narrative – are the thirty-something male barristers, teachers, journalists, and museum attendants of a small patch of West London. They lead inturned, doddery, superannuated lives, pottering between grocers, coffee-houses, bedsits, and the houses of their mothers and aunts. But the comedy here is serious in a way that Waugh's satanically energetic comedies of misery rarely are... comedies of English manners have seldom been darker" - Daily Telegraph

"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

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