More anecdotes than insights

A fond remembrance of the author’s long friendship with Muriel Spark, this book is long on anecdotes and short on insights into her work. Pleasant enough, but it is hard not to damn it with faint praise.

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"Blood speaking to blood"

Alan Taylor was working on Scotland on Sunday when he went to interview Muriel Spark where she was living with her companion Penelope Jardine in Arezzo. It was the beginning of a genuine friendship which lasted 15 years until Spark’s death in 2006, during which time Taylor frequently stayed in Italy in the old rambling Tuscany mansion and accompanied Spark on literary occasions abroad. This book has been published in time for her centenary year in 2018.

Much has been written about Muriel Spark, but this account of the woman and the writer inspired by a deep and sincere admiration ( love actually) presents a vivid and fair portrait. Taylor was particularly keen to show her ‘spark’ (the surname came from her brief unhappy marriage) – the entertaining sharp wit and the laughter, the expensive bright clothes – and he certainly succeeds. The contentious subject of her estranged son Robin is sympathetically dealt with. He was born when she was just 20 and given over to her parents to bring up, but he was financially supported by her throughout his life until he returned her cheques. His obsession with his mother’s Jewish roots was calamitous for both mother and son and is sensitively recounted.

Taylor’s memoir is stuffed with good things: it’s a delicately written travelogue with a sensuous, colourful creation of Tuscany; it’s drenched in an intimate knowledge of Spark’s archive letters and of her 22 novels enlightened by her life at the time of writing them; it’s an insightful but non-prurient examination of her tangled life-relationships, and of her childhood; it conveys her exclusive dedication to writing at the expense of all else (she couldn’t even boil an egg). Importantly, it’s also an exploration of her Scottishness which is an essential part of both Taylor and Spark, and of the relationship formed between them, what Taylor calls the ‘blood speaking to blood’ which drew them together.

But the narration! Was Alan Walker chosen merely because he is a Scot (if he is)? I don’t know anything about him, but I’m sad to have to say that the narration is dreadful and if I hadn’t been interested in the text, I’d have sent it back. His voice is expressionless, monotonous and dreary (so inappropriate for Taylor’s SPARKY memoir) with many examples of wrongly pronounced words. His Italian is laboured and inaccurate (hard and soft ‘c’ for example), English words are mispronounced and even his Scots (quotation from The Twa Corbies for instance) is not confident.

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Many mispronunciations

As usual, I say nothing about the qualities of the book (although you can make you own conclusions from my star rating), but confine myself to the quality of the audio performance.

A book both by a Scottish writer about another Scottish writer in Italy seems to require two things: a Scottish voice and someone who knows the very basic and entirely logical pronunciation rules of Italian. Alex Walker fits the bill for the former, but sadly not for the latter. Not only can he not work out when 'c' and 'g' are hard or soft (though the rules here are pretty easy to learn even if you have no Italian speaking facility at all), but he can't work out where to place the stress. In addition, some of his English pronunciation is also ropey, and he is the second performer I've come across recently who can't pronounce André Gide's surname in a way that makes it clear who he's actually referencing. Pretty dire.

I really don't understand why Audible can't provide a consultant who would assist actors in proper pronunciation of proper nouns and any rare words. It's all pretty basic and it ruins the listening experience. It I were the author, I'd be pretty cross about having my book mangled in this way.

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