Like a Cat Loves a Bird

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"A deeply stylish, astute, and illuminating portrait of a fascinating writer."—Francesca Wade, author of Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife A spiky and delicious new literary portrait of the great twentieth-century British author of beloved novels such as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Girls of Slender Means "She was, if you believe what you read in the papers: a genius, a survivor, a bad mother, a fickle friend, a closeted lesbian, a tyrant, a loner, an eccentric, a recluse, a gossip, and an arch-manipulator. She would politely encourage you not to believe what you read in the papers."—from Like a Cat Loves a Bird Muriel Spark (1918–2006) was one of literature's great shapeshifters. That mercurial quality is found in her strange, brilliant, cruel novels—with their plots featuring a cast of elderly characters receiving telephone calls from Death, the devil going clubbing in Peckham, and a fascist