The crime of miss jean brodie5/9/2023 The time-shifting is cleverly done – the whole book sparkles with intelligence, in fact – giving layers of depth to what fundamentally is a rather slight little story of one of the many “surplus” women left single after the huge loss of young men in WW1. Spark plays around with time, taking us back to the girls’ first introduction to Miss Brodie as ten-year-olds, and then forwards to what feels like the present of the book, in the late ’30s when the girls are almost grown-up and then forward again, often telling us the girls’ future as a way of shedding light on their personalities in the now. The book gets off to an excellent start, introducing us first to the girls in the Brodie set. But that doesn’t mean she has to live the life of a nun… She would never marry, she declares, since she is too devoted to her girls. Under cover of teaching them history, she instead tells them the story of her lost love, Hugh, who died in the First World War, and of the joys of being a woman in her prime. The people she confides in most are a group of girls who were once in her class and whom she singled out as her girls – the Brodie set. As she repeatedly tells anyone who will listen, she is in her prime. Miss Brodie is a teacher at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in the years between the wars. Goodness, Truth and Beauty… □ □ □ □ □
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