The Bachelors

A barrister, a “priest,” a detective, a lovelorn Irishman, a handwriting expert, a heinous spiritual medium … the very British bachelors of Muriel Spark’s supreme 1960 novel come in every stripe. First found contentedly chatting in their London clubs and shopping at Fortnum’s, the cozy bachelors are not set to stay cozy for long. Soon enough, the men are variously tormented—defrauded, stolen from, blackmailed, or pressed to attend horrid séances—and then plunged, all together, into the nastiest of lawsuits. At the center of that suit hovers pale, blank Patrick Seton, the medium. Meanwhile, horrors of every size plague the poor bachelors—from epileptic fits to forgeries, spiritualists foaming with protoplasm, and murder—and each horror delights, lit up by Spark’s uncanny wit, at once malicious, funny, and deadly serious.