Book summary

This 1960 satirical work of mock-folklore is set among the inhabitants of a working-class suburb of London. The mysterious Dougal Douglas comes to town to research a biography of a local resident--an aging actress--and becomes embroiled in the affairs of the district that ultimately end in blackmail, madness, near-murder, and a hilariously botched wedding. Watching Dougal--who surely ought to be seen as a villain--triumph over his hapless fellow citizens is inexplicably satisfying in Muriel Spark's handling of the situation.

Media reviews

"A fresh comic style does not appear every day, and that is what Muriel Spark has developed in this expert fantasy....It rests firmly on gags and nothing more; but the gags have been concealed with ingenuity, the pace is swift, the characters...familiar enough. The wackiness is cumulative, the style dead-pan...and above all no overt attempt is ever made to get a laugh. As a result there are laughs--and genial popular entertainment of, imaginably, the Alec Guinness kind....One might try to read serious social satire into it, but such a heavy-handed attempt would merely miss the point of a rather giddy book that is quite content to amuse."