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Reality and Dreams | By Muriel Spark H O U G H T O N M I F F L I N , 1 6 0 P A G E S
it makes sense that Tom Richards, the sexagenarian protagonist of Muriel Spark's 20th novel, is a film director. There's always been something briskly cinematic about Spark's prose -- she writes as if she's cutting film, slicing her sentences into sequence with an X-acto knife. You're only a few pages into "Reality and Dreams" before the laconic, witty snap of Spark's declarations settles into an agreeably choppy rhythm: "She had married him for his looks which were admittedly star quality; but marriage was not a film; Cora was not a director; she had cast him in the role of a husband and he was hopeless at it. In screenplays the husband has a script to go by. Johnny had next to none." You can almost picture the now-elderly author -- she is a dame of the British Empire -- stubbing out a cigarette at the end of each paragraph and shouting the word "Cut!" to no one in particular. This is a supremely confident novel, perhaps an overconfident one. It begins in a hospital room where Tom, an auteur who is directing a piece of art-house eroticism called "The Hamburger Girl," has landed after taking a nasty spill (12 broken ribs) during a crane shot. Tom's not a particularly sympathetic pile of broken bones; he's vain, abrupt with strangers, cruel to his family and dedicated to cheating on Claire, his wife. (Happily, she cheats right back.) Spark has a grand time rooting around in Tom's swaggering psyche -- so grand a time, in fact, that she occasionally slips and shoves clunky speeches into his mouth that seem like little more than her own editorializing: "How I long for some literate entertainment," Tom muses. "I used to know lots of older writers, thinkers and theatre people. They are all dead or nearly, now. The century is getting old, very old. Old with the faults of old age; especially what Eliot called 'the desperate exercise of failing power.' You see it everywhere. It's grotesque." (That Eliot quote is the ringer -- it's too precious to have sprouted organically from Tom's cranium.) Once Tom is released from his cramped hospital room, "Reality & Dreams" takes a needed gulp of fresh air, too. We're plunged into the various psychological and moral intrigues that surround Tom's family -- notably those involving his two daughters, one of whom is a sweetie-pie earth angel (Tom calls her an "aesthetic delight") while the other is curt, mannish and bitter. "Marigold was simply a natural disaster," her parents decide. When Marigold suddenly vanishes, the family is thrown into a tizzy, for reasons you wouldn't suspect -- they're really not sure if they want to find her or not, and they feel simply awful about it.
Plot summary isn't very helpful when it comes to describing Spark's novels. There are funny and winning moments throughout "Reality & Dreams," about such disparate subjects as movies, art, sibling rivalry, divorce, joblessness. And while Spark writes with blithe, ironic strokes, her narratives are always deeper and more probing than they seem. Still, "Reality & Dreams" never quite comes together as a coherent narrative. Spark probably knew this. She repeatedly tries to force the theme of "redundancy" -- redundant employees are fired, redundant spouses are left behind -- but it never really sticks. No matter. Spark's least inspired books are preferable to many writers' best efforts. This book is that increasing rarity: a slim novel that should have been longer.
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