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**SPOILERS**

Another Muriel Spark that has someone stabbing a person right out of the wide blue sky. Totally not expecting it. The humorous tone of the whole thing does not prepare you for a man taking a corkscrew to a woman's neck. Nine times. Then leaving her for dead. With the pot on the stove. (funny because the pot on the stove was used at least three times in the book as an excuse to end a conversation)

To me, Muriel Spark is like a mush of Dickens and Wodehouse. I need to mush in a dark author, though. Maybe just a pinch of, uh, i don't know, Stephen King? Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ references her "darkly comedic voice." Dickens for the characterizations, Wodehouse for the humor and physicality, and King for the darkness. There.

The things I like most about this book are the descriptions of Dougal Douglas. Some would call him Douglas Dougal, how funny. He had one shoulder higher than the other -- that shoulder was like another character in the story. It was always doing something or otherwise having attention called to it. I would laugh out loud every time Elaine said something like, "Stop it, can't you see he's deformed!" right in front of him. Another funny thing was how often Dougal had to beg off on his "fatal flaw." He couldn't abide anyone who was the least bit sick or injured.

Dougal, who in the university dramatics had taken the part of Rizzio in the play about Mary Queen of Scots, leaned forward and put all his energy into his own appearance. He dwelt with a dark glow on Mr Druce. He raised his right shoulder, which was already highly crooked by nature, and leaned on his elbow with a becoming twist of the body. Dougal put Mr Druce through the process of his smile, which was wide and full of white young teeth. He made movements with the alarming bones of his hands. Mr Druce could not keep his eyes off Dougal, as Dougal perceived.

At the second interview, Mr Druce paced the floor while Dougal sat like a monkey-puzzle tree, only moving his eyes to follow Mr Druce.

Dougal changed his shape and became a professor. He leaned one elbow over the back of the chair and reflected kindly upon Mr Druce.

Dougal leaned forward and became a television interviewer. Mr Druce stopped walking and looked at him in wonder.

Dougal turned sideways in his chair and gazed out of the window at the railway bridge. He was now a man of vision with a deformed shoulder.

Here's a description of the interaction between young women and men at a dance. This is the 1950's I think.

Beauty stood on the girls' side talking to a group of very similar and lustrous girls. They had prepared themselves for this occasion with diligence, and as they spoke together, they did not smile much nor attend to each other's words. As an accepted thing, any of the girls might break off in the middle of a sentence should a young man approach her, and turning to him might give him her entire and smiling regard.
Most of the men looked as if they'd not properly woken from deep sleep but glided as if drugged and with half-closed lids towards their chosen partner. This approach found favor with the girls. The actual invitation to dance was mostly delivered by gesture, a scarcely noticeable flick of the man's head towards the dance floor, whereupon the girl, with an outstretched movement of surrender, would swim into the hands of the summoning partner.

This Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ reviewer has some great bits pasted from the book, too!
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