The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Yes, yes, I know the novel came out in 1961 and the movie in 1969. But I’d never read it. I finally got around to it a scant 62 years later.

I was blown away by how modern it felt, especially in its description of the very particular kind of teacher who believes they are the center of the universe and it’s their job to teach their students what to think, not how to think. It’s manipulation bordering on child abuse… which also happens to be hysterically funny.

The popularity of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie may have obscured its structural genius.

Never have I read a book so comfortable drifting between present and future within a single paragraph, even a single sentence. The short novel simultaneously exists inside a classroom in the 1930s and throughout the lives the students will later have as women.

If the Scottish author Muriel Spark had a literary model for this design, I’ve yet to discover it. Sometimes an artist creates something entirely new.

A classic, and my inspiration. Dame Muriel and I went to the same school, James Gillespie’s High in Edinburgh, which she immortalised as the Marcia Blaine School for Girls. Jean Brodie is a monster, manipulating and grooming her favoured pupils, the “crème de la crème.” She is also dazzling and charismatic with a fine turn of phrase. The novel is deceptively short, more a novella—it was published in its entirety in The New Yorker magazine in 1961. But it’s a masterclass in fine writing, and every time I read it, I find new things to admire. It’s also very funny.… show more.