NOT TO DISTURB

by Muriel Spark ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 27, 1972

This little black nothing, elegantly bizarre as it can be, lends itself to any kind of speculation and the more insecure you are, the more you'll probably make of it. There have been high-sounding if unenlightening British reviews along with a ruinous one in the TLS. On the surface, the story concerns the aberrant doings of the servants in the Geneva household of the Baron and Baroness Klopstock where ""it is of violence that they shortly die."" The servants are taping and filming the prospective killings presided over by Lister. the butler, who looks like a Secretary of State and sounds like a 19th century savant. ""He doesn't cognate"" and ""you can't really construe with him"" unless you view him as an object of whimsical parody. Below stairs the conspiracy goes on, while upstairs, very upstairs, there's a distant connection and inheritor of the Klopstocks in the attic, barking and banging and attended by a nurse. He is to be married off perhaps to the already pregnant member of the large retinue before all this comes off ""Klopstock and barrel."" Unable to construe or cognate, it's easier to think of it as cryptocamp.

Pub Date: March 27, 1972

ISBN: 0811218678

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1972

Categories: FICTION