Customer Reviews

Robinson

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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.

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.