The Go-Away Bird

Overall The Go-Away Bird and Other Stories is an intriguing curate's egg. Like Scott Fitzgerald, Spark sometimes wrote rather bad pieces. Like him, she also wrote plenty of things that were exceptionally good. This book contains no genuine duds - in fact, I suspect that even the ones I have criticised may emerge as far better than I realise, once I've let them settle in my memory for a while. My favourites in the collection are those that contain an obvious element of the supernatural, but, for readers who like things that don't immediately give up their secrets, each story has its own particular strangeness and is worthy of at least one read through.