It is sometimes told that the bride died of grief and the groom shot himself on the Rye. It is wondered if the bride had been carrying on with the best man for some time past. Some say, no, he married another girl, while the bride married the best man.
Some say the bridegroom came back repentant and married the girl in the end. The affair is a legend referred to from time to time in the pubs when conversation takes a matrimonial turn.
The brief chapter concludes:īut, in any case, within a few weeks, everyone forgot the details.
It’s all a little confusing (deliberately, one imagines) and it’s difficult to get the story straight – especially since everyone is superimposing their views and imaginings over the facts. The Ballad of Peckham Rye is centred, indeed, in Peckham Rye – and concerns the arrival and influence of one Dougal Douglas (sometimes going by the name of Douglas Dougal.) The novel opens with the aftermath of a bride being jilted at the altar – indeed, with the bride’s mother insulting the jilting groom. You’ll be avidly reading Spark posts here, there, and everywhere, so I’ll try to keep my reviews brief… and hopefully enough to intrigue you to read them! Cutting a long story short, I thought they were both brilliant – neither take the crown away from Loitering With Intent as my favourite Spark novel yet, but both add to my cumulative for Spark. (There will be no shortage of Spark reviews around the blogosphere this week, but if you fancy reading all my archive posts on Spark, including this one, click here.) I chose The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960) because my supervisor said it might be a useful comparison to Lolly Willowes, and The Only Problem (1984) because it looked really interesting, and also one that I hadn’t seen mentioned anywhere else in the blogosphere. Since it’s my day to post, I’m going to write fairly speedily about two Spark novels that I’ve read recently – and hopefully by the end of the week I’ll have finished at least one more. Although I’m actually writing this in advance of Muriel Spark Reading Week, I’m confidently going to predict that we’re all having a great time, and that you’re all putting up brilliant, thought-provoking pieces on this wonderful novelist… yes? Yes.
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