Symposium (novel)

Symposium
First edition
Author Muriel Spark
Cover artist Susan Sluglett
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Publisher Constable (UK)
Houghton Mifflin (US)
Publication date
 1990
Media type Print & Audio
Pages 192
ISBN 0-09-469660-8

Symposium is a novel by Scottish author Muriel Spark, published in 1990. It was regarded by John Mortimer writing in The Sunday Times as one of the best novels of that year.[1]

Plot introduction

It is the story of a dinner party and the events leading up to it involving the lives of the five couples attending:

  • Hurley Reed (an American painter) and Chris Donovan (a rich Australian widow), the party hosts
  • Lord and Lady Suzy, who have recently been burgled
  • Ernst and Ella Untzinger, an EU commissioner and his wife, a teacher
  • Margaret and William Damien, newlyweds just returned from a honeymoon in Venice
  • Annabel Treece and Roland Sykes, a TV producer and genealogist, cousins

The story includes many flashbacks into the lives of the guests including a convent of Marxist nuns, a burglary ring preying on the guests, a mad Scottish uncle and several unexplained deaths. The dinner party itself ends with the murder of the mother of one of the guests...

Reception

  • Symposium was applauded by Time Magazine for the "sinister elegance" of Muriel Spark's "medium of light but lethal comedy." [2]
  • 'Symposium is put together like an intricate jigsaw...It is extremely clever and highly entertaining' - Penelope Lively[3]
  • 'Stiletto-sharp fiction...it is the dialogue that propels this dangerous, devilish book' - Scotland on Sunday[4]

References

  1. ↑ rear flyleaf of Reality and Dreams by Muriel Spark, 1st edition publ. 1996 by Constable ISBN 0-09-469670-5
  2. ↑ http://www.flipkart.com/symposium-muriel-spark/0811216594-h7w3f9j0c0
  3. ↑ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Symposium-Muriel-Spark/dp/1844082474
  4. ↑ http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/muriel+spark/ian+rankin/symposium/5406537/
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