Little more than a short story really. And while short stories have a habit of driving me bananas, possibly because they tend to come in books containing one good yarn and ten substandard ones, I enjoyed this standalone one. It’s about the symbiotic relationship between aspiring novelist Rowland, currently running a anachronistic kind of modern day co-educational finishing school, and his student Chris, an actually-getting-on-with-it novelist, with a cast of other odd characters getting in the way from time to time. I gave up expecting sense out of Muriel Spark’s stories years ago, sometimes you get sense but on the whole they are the kind of thing you just surf along with and get entertained by, and never expect a sensible ending!