Loitering with Intent

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by Muriel Spark

New Directions

Due/Published May 2001, 217 pages, paper

ISBN 0811214745

"How wonderful to be an artist and a women in the twentieth-century," Fleur Talbot rejoices. Loitering about London, c. 1949, with intent to gather material for her writing, Fleur finds a job "on the grubby edge of the literary world," as secretary to the odd Autobiographical Association. Mad eogmanics, hilariously writing their memoirs in advance - or poor fools ensnared by a blackmailer? Rich material, in any case. But when its pompous director, Sir Quentin, steals the manuscript of Fleur's new novel, fiction begins to appropriate life. The association's members begin to act out scenes exactly as Fleur herself and already written them in her missing manuscript. And as they meet darkly funny, pre-visioned fates, where does art start or reality end?"