The public image

Public imagel think Muriel Spark is best read and then reread. First for story and then for all the stuff that happens underneath, because the surface story tends to be deceptively simple. If you blink, then you'll miss it, and I suspect it is easy to miss the point in her work. Spark's 1968 novel The Public Image was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It's a slip of a thing, much like the central character Annabel Christopher. Written in the glamorous era of La Dolce Vita and the dawn of the paparazzi, this is a story that could easily to applied to the here and now of today's all-consuming celebrity culture.