Dave's Book Blog: "The Comforters" by Muriel Spark

Sunday, 12 July 2026

"The Comforters" by Muriel Spark

In this clever meta-fiction, Caroline is haunted by the sound of typing and voices repeating her thoughts to her; she realises she is a character in a novel. The absurd plot (Laurence believes his gran is involved in a gang of criminals smuggling diamonds) and devices such as including the conventional warning “At this point in the narrative, it might be as well to state that the characters in this novel are all fictitious.” in the text at chapter three and lampooning the use of repetition (eg “The way you notice absurd details, it's absurd of you.”; Ch 1; and “His mother told him repeatedly, ‘I've told you repeatedly, you are not to enter the maids’ rooms.’”; Ch 1) add to the Brechtian feel: as readers we are both immersed in the story and observing the narrative from a distance.

Other games with narrative include a moment right at the beginning when Laurence's grandmother tells the baker he doesn't eat white bread and he, he overhearing her, says this isn't true. It's a tension between fact and fiction, reinforced when the Baron, a bookseller, tells Caroline: “I hear everything in this shop but my informants always exaggerate. They are poets on the whole or professional liars of some sort, and so one has to make allowances.” (Ch 7) thus reminding the reader that they are reading untruths.

There's also a clever ambiguity in chapter eight when Lawrence asks Caroline how her book is going; he means her book she is writing on the form of the novel. When she replies it's nearing the end, she means the book that she is living in.

Religious, specifically Roman Catholic, overtones suggest that the meta-fiction is a metaphor for the relationship of humanity with a deity. For example, in chapter five, when Laurence and Caroline are debating whether to travel by car or by train, she wants to go by train because the narrative suggests they go by car. “It's a matter of asserting free will.” (Of course destiny dictates that in the end they go by car.)

We also play with the ideas of whether, for example, a tree exists if it is unobserved. In philosophy, one solution of this problem is to say that God observes everything all the time, thus giving the tree a continuous existence and simultaneously acting as a proof for God. In this novel, villainous Mrs Hogg vanishes when the author doesn't need her: “As soon as Mrs Hogg stepped into her room she disappeared, she simply disappeared. She had no private life whatsoever. God knows where she went in her privacy.” (Ch 7) God knows is more than just a cliche, here it is meant to reinforce the idea of God seeing Mrs Hogg when she is alone. Later, in chapter nine, when Mrs Hogg falls asleep in a car, she becomes invisible to the other occupants of the car.

Living as characters in a novel is a literary version of living as avatars in a simulation, as popularised in the movie The Matrix.

I really enjoyed these games. But you can also read this as a simple, if rather far-fetched, cosy crime novel about a smuggling gang. Spark's simple and direct writing makes her stories more accessible than other meta-fictional joys, such as Flann O'Brien's glorious At Swim-Two-Birds, Alasdair Gray's Lanark, and The Last Simple by Ray Sullivan.

Selected quotes:

“At seventy-eight Louisa Jepp did everything very slowly but with extreme attention, as some do when they know they are slightly drunk.” (Ch 1)
“Her form resembles a neat double potato just turned up from the soil with its small round head, its body from which hang the roots, her two thin legs below her full brown skirt and corpulence.” (Ch 1)
“Mrs Hogg stuck in her mind like a lump of food on the chest which will move neither up nor down.” (Ch 2)
“The demands of the Christian religion are exorbitant, they are outrageous.” (Ch 2)
“It was a recitative, a chanting in unison. It was something like a concurrent series of echoes.” (Ch 3)
“There is no more exquisite sight than that of a woman taken unawares with a rosary.” (Ch 3)
“She ... pulled the belt tight as she did always when she wanted to pull her brains together.” (Ch 7)
“The kitchen garden gone to seed and stalk.” (Ch 8)