Review by cattytrona - Symposium

4.0

If someone came to me, and said, 'I really liked Jean Brodie, what should I read from Spark next?', I would reply, 'read Symposium. In my experience so far,' and this is my 11th of her 22 novels, 'this is actually the distillation of her project: mostly English people having bourgeois conversations around a pit of strangeness in the middle of their nice lodgings. I think Symposium does it well, and if you don't like it, maybe give it up.' (I think I might actually recommend The Girls of Slender Means, of what I've read I think it's the closest to Brodie.)
I like the empty sort of witchiness in this, and I think it's compelling in its reveals. I like the cast of weirdos too.
It's extremely funny that this is set in the 90s. Like, no it's not. I mean, I'm sure it is, but it's such a sore thumb among cultural representation of that decade. This was published three years before Trainspotting. It's about dinner parties.
I thought the introduction in my edition was fairly bad. It introduces Spark, and Rankin's relationship with her, but there's barely a word on the book itself.