There are some writers who feel permanently modern - they just recognise unchanging aspects of the human psyche. I wonder if Muriel Spark is one of those.
In this episode of She Wrote Too, Caroline Rance and I were delighted to be joined by writer Jenn Gale to talk about Spark’s deliciously subversive novel Loitering with Intent - a tale about writing, ambition, faith, power, and the dangerous thrill of telling your own story before anyone else can get hold of it.
Loitering with Intent follows Fleur Talbot, a young writer navigating literary London, dubious mentors, and the unsettling realisation that when women write their lives, other people often feel entitled to revise them. It’s funny, unsettling and fiercely intelligent.
Our conversation ranges across Spark’s sly humour, her moral clarity, the slipperiness of truth, and the particular freedom (and peril) of writing as a woman who refuses to be modest, grateful, or quiet. We talk about control and authorship, belief and betrayal, and why Spark still feels so bracingly alive.
This is a discussion about a novel; but it’s also about voice, permission, and what happens when a woman decides to loiter with intent rather than wait to be invited in.
