the ballad of peckham rye by muriel spark

‘There was I,’ sang out an old man who was visible with his old wife on the corner bench over in the public bar, ‘waiting at the church, waiting at the church.’ The fellow had a good position as a refrigerator engineer.’ I know because she works at Meadows Meade in poor Miss Coverdale’s pool that was. One landlady out of a group of three said, ‘No, she’s a Dixie Morse. That chap who left the girl at the altar, that’s him. The barmaid said: ‘It was only a few weeks ago. The saga of Dixie’s abandonment is relayed through gossip at the pub, with various locals chipping in, adding their two pennies’ worth to the anecdote as it passes along. Spark is very skilled in her use of dialogue to convey the story, a technique that gives the novella a sense of closeness or immediacy, almost as if the reader is eavesdropping on a conversation between friends.

Some three weeks’ earlier, Humphrey had said ‘no’ at the altar, walking out on Dixie and a church full of guests. It’s wonderfully dark and twisted, characteristically Sparkian in its unconventional view.Ĭentral to the narrative is young Dougal Douglas who, on his arrival in Peckham from Scotland, sets about wreaking havoc on the community, disturbing the residents’ lives in the most insidious of ways.Īs the novella opens, people are discussing an aborted wedding involving Dixie Morse, a typist at Meadows, Meade & Grindley (a local textiles’ factory), and Humphrey Place, a refrigerator engineer. I loved this novella, especially the first half. The gloriously off-kilter world of Muriel Spark continues to be a source of fascination for me.

The ballad of peckham rye by muriel spark