The Finishing School

The lethally witty and morally penetrating new novel by one of the world's most admired writers College Sunrise is a somewhat louche and vaguely disreputable finishing school located in Lausanne, Switzerland. Rowland Mahler and his wife, Nina, run the school as a way to support themselves while he works, somewhat falteringly, on his novel. Into his creative writing class comes seventeen-year-old Chris Wiley, a literary prodigy whose historical novel-in-progress, on Mary Queen of Scots and the murder of her husband Lord Darnley, has already excited the interest of publishers. The inevitable result: keen envy, and a game of cat and mouse not free of sexual jealousy and attraction. Nobody writing has a keener instinct than Muriel Spark for hypocrisy, self-delusion and moral ambiguity, or a more deliciously satirical eye. "The Finishing School is certain to be another Spark landmark, an addition to one of the world's most lauded and entertaining bodies of work.