This, my first encounter with the writings of mrs Spark, has been a most satisfactory read. Muriel Spark was added to my “prospective reading” list quite recently, and this novel about a “half-Jewish” woman on a pilgrimage in the Middle East caught my interest. I have since learned that Spark has written 22 novels, and this is the longest one of them all (her usual output being rather of the length of short novels, about 100-200 pages). This was an important novel for Spark, probably because it allowed her to explore different parts of her heritage and identity. One critic pointed out that after this book, Spark turned her attention away from a writerly outlook based on realism in favour of a couple of novels grounded in surrealism (The Driver’s Seat, Not to Disturb). All fine and well, but what is the book about?
It is the story of Barbara Vaughan, a thirty-something spinster, recently converted to Catholicism (having grown up with a mixed home environment with a Protestant father and a Jewish mother) on a pilgrimage in Israel. The name of the eponymous gate might not be recognised by anyone born after 1967 but it was a makeshift passage between east Jerusalem and Jordan – a gate through which Barbara passes several times throughout the novel. Miss Vaughan has found a lover in the archaeologist Harry Clegg, digging in Potter’s field in Jordan. She is befriended by a British diplomat, Freddie Hamilton, an arab spy-cum-insurance agent-cum-tourist guide Yousef “Joe” Ramdez, the maronite tradesman Alexandros and a slew of other characters who pass in and out of this novel. Quite early in the story are we introduced to the world of spying, double-crossing, and intrigue.
This novel is plot-wise quite dense, but what I love most is the quipping prose and the steady clip of the writing. It is quite a prodigious gallery of personages that capture various aspects of life in the Middle East. (it did at least ring true to me, based on a rather meager pool of experience). It made me both want to revisit Israel and simultaneously to put it off. Actually, the book doesn’t deal much with Israel as such. It is very much a British perspective, and I was a little apprehensive as to whether that would affect my own view of the country. I was chiefly interested in reading this book to see how it handled the issue of being “half-Jewish”, a pitiable construct which does service to no-one and leaves dissatisfied all of those concerned. Here, an illuminating passage from early on in the book, when Vaughan converses with a taxi driver (oh, those conversations with Israeli taxi drivers, how I remember them):
She recalled that day she had been driven by a guide along the road to Caesarea … It was eleven in the morning:
‘A half-Jew?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which half?’
‘Through my mother.’
‘Then you are a whole Jew. The Jew inherits through the mother by Jewish Law.’
‘I know that. But one says half-Jew to mean that one of the parents is a Gentile and the other -‘
‘But the Jew inherits through the mother. You are then a full Jew by the Law.’
Yes, but not according to the Gentile parent’s law.’
‘What was your father’s Law?‘
That was a question indeed.
I’m afraid he was a law unto himself.’
(pp. 30-31)
Another area of interest is the way Spark characterises the Arabs and their thinking. And the British. It has been said that this book, all things counted, is not entirely a success, compared to Sparks other books. Her style doesn’t fully flower in this mode, as it were. Not having read any other Spark books, I find myself in a unique position to judge this book without recourse to inter-oeuvre comparison -which I consider a luxurious position to be in. Spark’s writing is known for its biting wit and sharp observational style, incorporating odd characters and funny off-beat situations. This book has a few of those, and in the final part of the book, almost in excess with the mix-up mania in an old chapel in Jericho.
Late in her life, Muriel Spark was accused by her first son, Samuel Robin Spark, of being inconsiderate. This was a very sordid affair, with lots of public name-calling. It was sparked by the question of whether she is considered Jewish or not – a theme which appears throughout this book. Another of her books (Territorial Rights) includes a scene where a woman is torn apart by two lovers – which might be an image of how Spark saw her two cultural traditions. Others have analysed Spark strictly as a Catholic and have envisioned her writing style as imitating God (The Driver’s Seat has been described as a “whydunnit” as opposed to a “whodunnit” because the murdered is revealed in the first page, ergo the narrative perspective is similar to that of an all-seeing deity). Another book also has a religious theme, The Only Problem, in which the main character is grappling with the old “theodicy problem”.
Muriel Spark was appropriated by all kinds of people in the 90s, everybody wanted to claim her (a bit like the hedge runner Lyudmila Engqvist in Sweden at about the same time period), Scots, Brits, Jews, Jews, Catholics (that’s right, I wrote Jews twice because I meant first Jews as a people and second as a religion, even though the division is not made quite that easily).
Muriel Spark would have turned 100 in 2018, which prompted all those who loved her to arrange celebrations of her work, and a big centenary was organised in Royal whatever Hall in Edinburgh. The Scottish-Jewish community also made a thing of it, and a woman called Tracey S. Rosenberg wrote a follow-up to Mandelbaum Gate called “the Western Wall”.
I might continue to read Muriel Spark, but in that case it would be for her prose. Her writing doesn’t seem to imbue me with any sense of Jewish pride, which I seem to want from time to time in my reading.
Kinship of all Species 