The I Can't Be Bothered To Type It Again Book Dictatorship: Next Month: The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie

Last year, I spent the entire year trying to write a funny book set in a 1930s girls' boarding school, before finally having to abandon hope and the book, which is a very painful and difficult thing for a writer to do, but possibly the reason I couldn't finish the book is that The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie has already been written, and it is impossible to improve upon perfection. Damn you, Muriel Spark!

My first exposure to Miss Jean Brodie was via the justifiably famous film starring Maggie Smith. It is one of the very first films I can remember watching, and was probably shown to me in the misguided belief that if a film is about children, it must be for children. Which is emphatically not the case. But even so, I remember being completely absorbed by, and envious of, the blooming sophistication of the schoolgirl characters as they grow up. The latter part of the film has sex in it, and this was mesmerising and slightly disgusting. Only later did I realise that, ironically, the earlier part of the film is about children being desperately curious about sex but slightly disgusted by it.

It was only years later that I read the book, but even that was a long time ago now, and my memories of the novel and of the film have melted into one another. I picked the book off the shelf yesterday (nice narrow spine) and started reading it again, and was immediately reminded of what makes it so brilliant: the impeccably observed, hilarious dialogue; and the character of Miss Jean Brodie herself, possibly the most fascinating in modern literature.

Published in 1961 but set in the 1930s, it's about the sexual awakening of a group of girls at a time when they weren't supposed to have sexual awakenings, but it's more than that: it's an intellectual and political awakening too, and an examination of the attractions and terrors of fascism, the fascination and fragility of power, a study of the social danger that is an intelligent, sexual, unmarried woman, and an exploration of what happens to that woman when she starts to age.

It isn't perfect, no matter what I might have said in my first paragraph, and I imagine it will divide readers, but that makes for a more fun discussion. Meet back here to talk about it on Thursday May 21st.

Oh god. You probably all did it for A Level, didn't you?

PS Thank you all for your brilliant discussion of A Month In The Country, it totally makes this book club worth doing.

PPS How brilliant is that poster?