suffer vicariously as they attempt to foil their predators...Muriel Spark raises the question: what lies beneath this dazzling game? Anything? Nothing? And, as ever, she leaves us on our own, for most of the book, to try to answer it... Muriel Spark drops her enigmatic allusions for long enough to tell us, plainly, that she is writing about money. In a couple of brilliant paragraphs, she describes the change that overtook the world in 1973, with the rise of Arab oil power and the fear of global recession." Drabble concludes: "Where is glittering sophistication in this new harsh world? What will Muriel Spark do next? Will she, like her heroine Maggie, put on shabbier clothes for a shabbier future, dissimulate, learn new tricks? Will she shake off the confines of a public image and a public style that have at times looked like a haute couture straight jacket? It is hard to praise a plain future and a Christian ethic in jewelled prose. It will be interesting to read the speculations of post-'73 Spark." References External links New York Times review by Margaret Drabble 1976 British novels Novels by Muriel Spark Novels set in Italy Catholic novels Macmillan Publishers books