The Finishing School is a real blackberry bush of a novel: tart and barbed, arch and juicy. Any sweetness is perilous to reach.

In Muriel Spark’s last novel (2004), she turns the blowtorch on creative writing teachers, novelists, publishers, rich teens, and the novel-writing process itself.

College Sunrise is run by Rowland and Nina, a couple barely above the level of charlatan. The students learn etiquette essentials: the proper way to hold a plover’s egg while greeting someone, and how to evade an elephant with a handkerchief. It’s immaterial that the students don’t know what a plover is.

Rowland, a would-be novelist, teaches creative writing. He martyrs himself on his own writer’s block instead of doing any actual drafting.

But there’s a student among them who upsets the barrel: red-haired Chris. He seduces staff, works hard; dispatches with facts, credibility,a nd history; and tiptoes up to fame. He drives Rowland crazy. But how crazy? Crazy enough to kill?

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