“According to the catechism of the Roman Catholic faith, into which Rowland had been born, six sins against the Holy Spirit are specified. The fourth is ‘Envy of Another’s Spiritual Good’, and that was the sin from which Rowland suffered.”

Muriel Spark’s twenty-second and final novel, The Finishing School , was published in 2004. She died two years later. It opens with a lesson on how to write fiction: “You begin by setting your scene.” The lesson is being imparted by Rowland to his creative writing class at College Sunrise, a mobile finishing school stationed that year at Ouchy near Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Rowland runs the school jointly with Nina, his wife. At 29 and 26 years old, respectively, they’ve figured out that there is no better way to make money than by promising t

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