Muriel Spark’s Novel of a Roman Catholic in Jerusalem https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/arts-culture/2018/04/muriel-sparks-novel-of-a-roman-catholic-in-jerusalem/

April 18, 2018 | Sarah Rindner
About the author: Sarah Rindner is a writer and educator. She lives in Israel.

On the occasion of what would have been the Scottish novelist Muriel Spark’s 100th birthday, Sarah Rindner comments on her Jewish origins and how they find expression in her work:

Born Muriel Camberg in Edinburgh to a Jewish father and a Presbyterian mother (who also had Jewish lineage), Muriel Spark was raised a Protestant with strong ties to her Jewish extended family. After a tumultuous young adulthood—including an abusive marriage, divorce, and her virtual abandonment of her son (he was raised by his grandparents)—Spark threw herself into her writing. At the age of thirty-six, Spark converted to Roman Catholicism, a move she believed contributed to her eventual success as a novelist. Her son, Robin, who became an Orthodox Jew, would eventually tell a different story about his mother’s origins, emphasizing the Jewishness of her maternal line. But Spark resisted her son’s narrative and continued to describe herself as a “Gentile Jewess.” . . .

This tension is explored most fully in The Mandelbaum Gate, which at more than 300 pages is also Spark’s lone “long novel.” Set in Jerusalem in 1961 during the period of the Eichmann trial, Mandelbaum Gate relates the Holy Land journey of Barbara Vaughan, an English schoolteacher in her late thirties who has recently embraced Roman Catholicism. In contrast with Spark, it’s Barbara’s father who is a Gentile and her mother who is Jewish. This swap only heightens Barbara’s identity conflict because it means that both religions can claim her. . . .

While Spark is far from a political writer, the novel contains a perceptible subtext contrasting the Arab and Israeli claims on Jerusalem. The Arabs whom Barbara encounters are constantly reimagining themselves, inventing histories of orange groves they once supposedly possessed in Jaffa, and nimbly adapting political affiliations and personal narratives for the edification of their Western listeners. This disposition both intrigues Barbara and puts her off. The Jews she meets generally present themselves as they are, and it is Barbara who is left fumbling for a firmer and more rooted identity.

Read more on Jewish Review of Books: https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/3076/the-gentile-jewess/