- Paperback
- Publisher: Avon Books (Mm) (Feb 1987)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0380013886
- ISBN-13: 978-0380013883
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,786,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
January Marlow, a heroine with a Catholic outlook of the most unsentimental stripe, is one of three survivors out of twenty-nine souls when her plane crashes, blazing, on Robinson's island. Presumed dead for months, the three survivors must wait for the annual return of the pomegranate boat. Robinson, a determined loner, proves a fair if misanthropic host to his uninvited guests; he encourages January to keep a journal: as "an occupation for my mind, and I fancied that I might later dress it up for a novel. That was most peculiar, as things transpired, for I did not then anticipate how the journal would turn upon me, so that having survived the plane disaster, I should nearly meet my death through it." In Robinson, Muriel Spark's wonderful second novel, under the tropical glare and strange fogs of the tiny island, we find a volcano, a ping-pong playing cat, a dealer in occult as well as lucky charms, flying ants, sexual tension, a disappearance, blackmail, and -- perhaps -- murder.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
If you ask me how I remember the island, what it was like to be stranded there by misadventure for nearly three months, I would answer that it was a time and landscape of the mind if I did not have the visible signs to summon its materiality: my journal, the cat, the newspaper cuttings, the curiosity of my friends ; and my sisters - how they always look at me, I think, as one returned from the dead. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
If you ask me how I remember the island, what it was like to be stranded there by misadventure for nearly three months, I would answer that it was a time and landscape of the mind if I did not have the visible signs to summon its materiality: my journal, the cat, the newspaper cuttings, the curiosity of my friends ; and my sisters - how they always look at me, I think, as one returned from the dead. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Pointless book, that felt like a trudge despite it's brevity. Potentially great: 5 people on an island, clash of personalities, smothering intensity etc etc. But actually just dull. Owner murdered - oh no he isn't. The end. For a more unhinged, better Spark, try something like 'The Driver's Seat'.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Muriel Spark, Robinson
31 July 2006
Format:Paperback
I sometimes find it ironic that Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) is generally identified as the beginning of realism in English literature. While Crusoe does, arguably, bookend a tradition of novelistic prose defined by a rational approach to observation, description, and narration of events, it also spawned a tradition of desert-island stories that demonstrate, again and again, how the isolated individual's ability to represent what is "real" strains the devices of realism to the point that they inevitably shudder and break down. From the inexplicable single footprint that sends Defoe's Crusoe into an existential crisis, to the bizarre supernatual whispers of the island on ABC's Lost, the shipwrecked narrator is one of western culture's most durable reminders of how, sometimes, the most realistic way we have of telling it like it is plunges quickly into the downright surreal.
Muriel Spark's second novel, Robinson (1958), is an exemplary part of this tradition. More conventionally realist in style than her other novels, its familiar novelistic lexicon, passages of descriptive detail, and explicit invocation of the iconic Crusoe tale lull one into a sense of readerly security--that trust, so vital to realism, that one knows from the words on the page just what is going on around here. Spark's narrator, January, relies on her own powers of observation and rational deduction to make sense of her surroundings and situation, and we in turn rely on her; by the time she, and we too, realize that "the real" behaves differently on an island--or, rather, for the solitary individual mind, untempered by social negotiation--eluding the formula of empirical evidence and rational judgment, more is at stake than we bargained for: for January, her very life; for us, our ability to believe that she, our only guide, is the best conduit of her own story. While those readers expecting a book full of Spark's signature piquancy might be disappointed (which is not to say it's not there; for example, one of January's wreck-mates speaks a "peculiar idiom of English speech ... acquired first from a Swiss uncle, using Shakespeare and some seventeenth-century poets as textbooks, and Fowler's Modern English Usage as a guide," and his dialogue is consistently hilarious), Robinson seems to me an excellent instance of a non-realist's foray into realism, illuminating the genre's frequently forgotten--even disavowed--quirks and mysteries.
Muriel Spark's second novel, Robinson (1958), is an exemplary part of this tradition. More conventionally realist in style than her other novels, its familiar novelistic lexicon, passages of descriptive detail, and explicit invocation of the iconic Crusoe tale lull one into a sense of readerly security--that trust, so vital to realism, that one knows from the words on the page just what is going on around here. Spark's narrator, January, relies on her own powers of observation and rational deduction to make sense of her surroundings and situation, and we in turn rely on her; by the time she, and we too, realize that "the real" behaves differently on an island--or, rather, for the solitary individual mind, untempered by social negotiation--eluding the formula of empirical evidence and rational judgment, more is at stake than we bargained for: for January, her very life; for us, our ability to believe that she, our only guide, is the best conduit of her own story. While those readers expecting a book full of Spark's signature piquancy might be disappointed (which is not to say it's not there; for example, one of January's wreck-mates speaks a "peculiar idiom of English speech ... acquired first from a Swiss uncle, using Shakespeare and some seventeenth-century poets as textbooks, and Fowler's Modern English Usage as a guide," and his dialogue is consistently hilarious), Robinson seems to me an excellent instance of a non-realist's foray into realism, illuminating the genre's frequently forgotten--even disavowed--quirks and mysteries.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
An interesting lesser work
31 May 2006
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
With Muriel Spark's 2006 death, I had an interest in reading one of her less well-known novels. "Robinson" was worth the trip, but it should not dethrone Spark's masterpieces "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and "The Abbess of Crewe" from their rightful place at the top of the list of her novels.
Robinson uses the genre of "wrecked on a desert island" to explore how people's true personalities come out in this unusual environment. An interesting side-riff is the contrast between Roman Catholic veneration of religious objects and quasi-pagan beliefs in lucky charms. The novel has an interesting plot twist that maintains the reader's interest to the end of the book, but the prose is stilted. Too often the narrator makes double comments on what she said, what she thought, and what she now wished she had said. This gets tedious.
Careful reading of an author's minor works can enhance our enjoyment of the masterpieces and that is the case here.
Robinson uses the genre of "wrecked on a desert island" to explore how people's true personalities come out in this unusual environment. An interesting side-riff is the contrast between Roman Catholic veneration of religious objects and quasi-pagan beliefs in lucky charms. The novel has an interesting plot twist that maintains the reader's interest to the end of the book, but the prose is stilted. Too often the narrator makes double comments on what she said, what she thought, and what she now wished she had said. This gets tedious.
Careful reading of an author's minor works can enhance our enjoyment of the masterpieces and that is the case here.
Fantastic!
4 Jun 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I am delighted to have recently found Muriel Spark, and have spent the last two weeks reading, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie", "The Comforters", and "Robinson". "Robinson" is my favorite of the three. I was mesmerized by the tale and anxious to discover the solution to the mystery of what takes place on the island. Muriel Spark invents the most marvelous characters and gives us such insight into their deepest thoughts and secrets. If you haven't read Muriel, do so.
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