Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Study Guide for Muriel Spark's "The First Year of My Life"
    A Study Guide for Muriel Spark's "The First Year of My Life"
    A Study Guide for Muriel Spark's "The First Year of My Life"
    Ebook33 pages23 minutes

    A Study Guide for Muriel Spark's "The First Year of My Life"

    By Gale and Cengage

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Muriel Spark's "The First Year of My Life," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535836579
    A Study Guide for Muriel Spark's "The First Year of My Life"

    Read more from Gale

    Related to A Study Guide for Muriel Spark's "The First Year of My Life"

    Related ebooks

    Teaching Methods & Materials For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry

      Dec 21, 2017

      The book I’ve read the most this year is Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño. I read a few pages from it every morning before I crawl across the floor to my desk. It’s Bolaño distilled. It’s a crime story, a death story, a sex story, a love story, but always i

      2 min read

    • Article

      Redux: The Virgin Suicides

      Oct 23, 2018

      Redux: The Virgin Suicides
      2 min read

    • Article

      Russian Roulette

      Feb 1, 2021

      As a longterm fan of Dostoevsky (and yes, unusually for a 19th century literary novelist, he does have a kind of fan club, many of whom are adolescents high on the thrill of first encountering his freewheeling combo of philosophical pondering and jaz

      2 min read

    • Article

      Clarence Page: The Age-old Trick Of ‘Passing’: Fiction Writer The Latest To Be Disgraced By Lies About Heritage

      Mar 20, 2023

      I have never known a man who faked his own death, but I have known a man who faked his own life, then sadly failed to live long enough for us to talk about it. I’m talking about the late Hache Carrillo, a rising, award-winning literary talent whose r

      3 min read

    • Article

      Rise Up!

      Mar 3, 2020

      Rise Up!
      13 min read

    • Article

      Journey of Mann

      Oct 10, 2021

      Journey of Mann
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Lifelong Habit of Being

      Jun 1, 2020

      DAYS AFTER THE 9/11 attacks, Susan Sontag noted the frequency with which the hijackers were being charged with cowardice: “[W]hatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter,” she insisted in The New Yorker, “they were not cowards.” So

      4 min read

    • Article

      FROM THE WD EDITORS: Our favourite Beginnings and Endings

      Jul 31, 2019

      The best beginnings toss readers into the whirlwind that is going to be your story right as the action begins, giving them no choice but to read further. The best endings stick with readers for years after they’ve closed the book. WD editors got toge

      1 min read

    • Article

      10 Literary Diss Tracks

      Apr 9, 2018

      10 Literary Diss Tracks
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Joys And Misery Of Monica

      Aug 26, 2021

      The Joys And Misery Of Monica
      5 min read

    • Article

      Undaunted: The Untold Story Of Women In American Journalism

      May 31, 2023

      “Getting the cold call email from him was crazy,” said author and journalist Brooke Kroeger, telling me about how her latest project, Undaunted – which recounts the two-century-long story of women in journalism – originated with a phone call from a m

      4 min read

    • Article

      Apply Aesthetic Pressure to the Language: An Interview with Paul Harding

      Jun 18, 2018

      This interview first appeared in Chinese at the Shanghai Review of Books on June 3, 2018. I spent my first Iowan winter day at home reading Tinkers, the 2010 Pulitzer Fiction Prize winner. Outside, snow began to fall. I poured myself a cup of hot tea

      19 min read

    • Article

      A Master Of Self-promotion: Letters Reveal How Philip Roth ‘Hustled’ For Prizes

      Aug 29, 2021

      As one of America’s foremost novelists, Philip Roth was awarded nearly every literary accolade, including a Pulitzer prize. It might be assumed that his work spoke for itself in securing these plaudits, but previously unpublished letters reveal he wa

      3 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Solnit, Strout, Gaitskill, and More

      Oct 19, 2021

      This week we're looking at new titles from the likes of Rebecca Solnit, Tiphanie Yanique, Elizabeth Strout, and Mary Gaitskill. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Solnit, Strout, Gaitskill, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Intellectual Aristocrats

      Dec 21, 2023

      In his final year at King’s College, Cambridge, Keynes (1883–1946) could not decide whether his main intellectual preoccupation should be economics or moral philosophy. He opted for the former in 1908, took up a lectureship and in 1915 joined the Tre

      2 min read

    • Article

      Yesterday’s Ruse

      Apr 5, 2020

      Yesterday’s Ruse
      5 min read

    • Article

      Your Bookshelf May Be Part Of The Problem

      Jun 6, 2020

      Anti-racist reading lists are making the rounds right now — and they can be useful if people do the work of reading. But critic Juan Vidal suggests you look closer to home, to your own bookshelf.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Like A Writer Possessed

      Oct 8, 2022

      Like A Writer Possessed
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Study Guide for Muriel Spark's "The First Year of My Life"

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Muriel Spark's "The First Year of My Life" - Gale

      10

      The First Year of My Life

      Muriel Spark

      1975

      Introduction

      Muriel Spark's short story The First Year of My Life is one of the her better-known works. Spark was a prolific author who wrote predominantly novels and short stories. First published in the New Yorker on June 2, 1975, The First Year of My Life is narrated from the point of view of an omniscient infant in its first year of life. This device actually echoes that of Laurence Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy, which is often acknowledged as a groundbreaking narrative work that influenced the form of the modern novel. Where Sterne's novel begins with the eponymous narrator discussing his conception, Spark's story begins with the unnamed narrator's discussion of the day of her birth. In The First Year of My Life this narrative device is employed as a means of exploring the horrors of war, specifically those experienced during World War I. The story plays on the unwitting wit and wisdom of children. Filled with irony and allusions to both the historic and literary events and figures of the day, Spark's story portrays a world so bleak even a baby (the narrator) is unable to smile.

      The First Year of My Life initially appeared in book form in Spark's 1982 collection Bang-Bang—You're Dead and Other Stories. It is more recently available in the 2001 edition of All the Stories of Muriel Spark.

      Author Biography

      Novelist, short-story author, playwright, poet, and literary critic Spark was born Muriel Sarah Camberg on February 1, 1918, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her father, Bernard Camberg, was Jewish, and her mother, Sarah Elizabeth Maud (Uezzell) Camberg was a member of the Anglican Church. Spark took a brief correspondence course on commercial writing at Heriot-Watt College from 1935 to 1937, going on to teach English and then to work as a secretary. Also in 1937 (on September 3), she married Sidney Oswald Spark. The couple moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where their son, Robin,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1