While we were in the Kootenay region this summer we found a used book store being run out of a historic building on Main Street in Kaslo. The owner offered to look in his stock at home for some older Peter Robinson books and told me to come back in a few days. When I did he had several books I needed to fill out my stock and I decided to pick up two Muriel Spark books as well. I read this one years ago but it seems to me it would be good to read it again.

This is a book that I read years ago and have remembered vaguely since then. I suspect that my memories are mostly from the film that starred Maggie Smith as Miss Brodie. I read the book after seeing the movie but that memorable character as played by Maggie Smith still was pervasive. (As an aside I was lucky enough to see Maggie Smith in Noel Coward's play Private Lives at Ontario's Stratford Festival; she is even more impressive live than on film.) Even after this reread I am sure my mind will still picture the title character as Maggie Smith looked.

Miss Jean Brodie taught in a private school in Edinburgh in the years between the two World Wars. She is described as being in her 40s in her prime so she would have been born in the last part of the 19th century. Although women had achieved some gains in equality Miss Jean Brodie was unusually advanced in her thinking and in her personal life. Six young girls who were taught by her in lower grades continued to be influenced by her even when they went into the Senior School much to the alarm of the head mistress of the school. The head mistress wanted to get some evidence that would allow her to dismiss Miss Brodie and she repeatedly questioned these six girls about her. Since they all revered their former teacher they would never divulge anything that could endanger her position; until one of them did just that. Miss Brodie was an admirer of Mussolini and Hitler and she talked one young girl into going to the Spanish Civil War to fight on Franco's side. That was the straw that caused another of the Brodie set to give the head mistress ammunition to have her dismissed.

Looking back from this time period it is hard to understand how anyone could have supported the Fascists but I know this fictional character had real life counterparts such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and the aviator Lindbergh. I suppose that the economic achievements of the Fascists were seen as admirable and I imagine that the racism was not unusual for the time. Still I personally have a hard time reconciling Miss Brodie's political stance with her liberated views on women's roles and relationships with men.

I took this book to our Winnipeg BookCrossing meetup last night. I didn't notice who took it home.

I read this a long long time ago. I'm not sure how old i would have been but likely too young to get a lot out of it. I remember it as being one of the first books I took out of the adult section of the library. This and Sister Carrie are the ones I still remember.

I took this home from our September meet up intending to set it free in my LFL, but I may just give it a second read before I do. Thanks gypsysmom.