Description at Goodreads:
'Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life...'
Passionate, free-thinking and unconventional, Miss Brodie is a teacher who exerts a powerful influence over her group of 'special girls' at Marcia Blaine School. They are the Brodie set, the crème de la crème, each famous for something - Monica for mathematics, Eunice for swimming, Rose for sex - who are initiated into a world of adult games and extracurricular activities they will never forget. But the price they pay is their undivided loyalty ...
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a brilliantly comic novel featuring one of the most unforgettable characters in all literature.
This book was my Classic Club Spin for Spin #41, from October 2025. I put off reading it, so only just finished it in February. It was first published in 1961, but the story is set in the years leading up to World War II. I read it in eBook format, which I don't do very often. This year I have a goal to read at least 12 books on my Kindle.
My thoughts:
I think I was prejudiced against this novel from the beginning because I dislike the idea of teachers with favorites or pet students, and I dislike cliques in academic situations (or anywhere I guess). I tried to let go of my assumptions before reading it, but from the beginning I was appalled by Miss Jean Brodie's behavior, and it became even more disturbing later in the story.
So, I did not enjoy reading this book at all. In retrospect, I can appreciate the good points of the book, especially the way the story was told. It has an interesting structure with shifts in time both backwards and forward, and the end result is interesting and sometimes confusing.
But for me, there was no one to like in this story at all. I can deal with unlikeable characters, but I need someone in the story to care about. The main character seems admirable at the beginning, trying to enlighten her students with new and different ideas. But she is revealed as a narcissist, only interested in controlling others. The school girls that she has chosen for her "set" of six proteges are of course only young girls; some are more perceptive than others. I gradually realized that most of them were not taking her ideas all that seriously, for various reasons.
One of the girls in the set, Sandy Stranger, was a very interesting character and a lot is revealed about her towards the end. I did not realize that so much emphasis was placed on her character until I read some other reviews. But in some ways she was as manipulative as Miss Brodie.
Even though I found the book distasteful, the end result is that I want to try more books by this author, and I hope that I will like them better. Most (maybe all?) of her books are short, novella length.
3 comments:
Great review. I never read the book but I saw the movie starring Maggie Smith and Pamela Franklin and it's a disturbing film for the reasons you say but very well acted. I got the feeling that despite all her bravado Miss Brodie (Maggie Smith) was an unhappy lonely character. But I agree not likeable. No one in that film was someone you could root for.
It is hard to stay engaged in a story when there's nothing redeeming - nothing you care about - in the characters, Tracy. And I agree with you that Miss Brodie is manipulative in her way, among other things. I wonder what you'll think of Sparks' writing if you read some of her other work. I think her writing style is skilled, but that could be just me.
Oh no!! I have this on my CC list and have heard good things about it from others. But, we don't all like the same things and that okay. I think I'll put this one off for awhile.
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