The ‘Difficult’ Relationship: Christine Brooke-Rose, Catholicism and Muriel Spark

Christine Brooke-Rose has often been regarded by critics and readers alike as
‘difficult’ in the sense that her work seems to deliberately elude classification
and definitive labels. This tendency to eschew categorisation with her writing
has been well documented in academic criticism; however, most critics have
failed to recognise the displacement in her life as a contributory factor
informing the nature of her work. This essay considers Brooke-Rose’s
development as a writer through a biographical lens, not to reduce her to her
own experiences but rather to highlight her extraordinary life and the way
that it has impacted upon her work. This essay focusses upon her early
development as an author during the 1950s using the friendship she
established with Muriel Spark during this period and her frequent negotiation
of Catholicism as important biographical touchstones in an effort to enhance
the reader’s understanding of Brooke-Rose’s early development as an author.
It uses archival material alongside excepts from her novels to align the
author’s work with her biographical experiences. This is by no means a full
critical depiction of Brooke-Rose’s life or her relationship to Catholicism, but it
serves as an introduction to both in order to go some way towards
‘demystifying her origins’.