Finished: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Spark) Well, that was a quick read! A pretty good book about an unconventional girl's prep school teacher in 1930's Edinburgh. Miss Brodie has the girls for the "middle years" from the time they're 10 to 12-13, before they move on the upper school. She handpicks six girls to be her creme de la creme...the "Brodie Set", and they remain close to Miss Brodie all the way through their teen years as well. Miss Brodie believes not in stuffing their heads with all the traditional schooling subjects, like grammar, history and math...but instead believes in enlightening them with the arts, her own traveling, life and love experiences. She believes that education should be a bringing out of their own natural characters and talents as opposed to a "stuffing in" of all that other stuff. Her traveling includes usually going to Italy for summer break. She then comes home and gushes about Mussolini and Fascism to the girls. Of course, the head mistress and the other faculty frown upon her ways and are constantly looking for ways to force her to retire. The headmistress is constantly calling the Brodie Set in for tea to trick them into spilling some detail about Miss Brodie that would get her in trouble. The girls are savvy, though, and extremely loyal. Miss Brodie and the girls also spend alot of time together outside of school, going to museums, and even to her own house. That would never be OK in this day and age. The Brodie Set are: Monica, the smart one with sausagey legs who is good at math; Rose, the sexual one; Eunice, the athlete; Mary, the dumb one who always gets blamed for any mistakes; Jenny, the prettiest one and Sandy's best friend; and Sandy, the insightful and imaginative one, and Jenny's best friend. The two of them write a romantic journal about Miss Brodie and her love life, including her deceased former fiance. As young teens, the girls begin to visit the house of the music teacher with her when Miss Brodie starts dating him. I'm not sure how appropriate that is either, but that part is all innocent. However, Miss Brodie is really in love with the art teacher (and he with her) who is married with children. When the girls start visiting the art teacher and his family to pose for his portraits, that's when things become a little less appropriate. Miss Brodie encourages Rose, who she thinks is most sexually provocative, to have an affair with the art teacher when she's seventeen so Miss Brodie can live vicariously through the affair. Miss Brodie confides her plan to Sandy who always goes on the portrait sittings with Rose. However, it ends up being Sandy who has the affair with the art teacher. Miss Brodie is disappointed because she thought Sandy would make more of herself. There is also an incident where Miss Brodie encourages a sixteen year old girl, Emily Joyce, who is already prone to running away and being wild, to run away and fight for Italy. The young girl is killed in an attack on the train ride over. The year after the girls have moved on from upper school, one of them finally betrays Miss Brodie to the headmistress and she is forced to retire early. By 1946 Miss Brodie has succumbed to a disease, "something growing inside her". She dies never knowing who betrayed her, but only that she was told it was one of the Brodie Set. We find out that Sandy finally realized that Miss Brodie should not be influencing other young girls after encouraging her sexual plan with the art teacher, and after encouraging Emily Joyce to run away. However, instead of getting herself in trouble as well by telling of the affair, she tells the headmistress that she should try to remove Miss Brodie not on the grounds of her private life, but on the grounds of her political beliefs..."she is a fascist, after all". That ends up being enough for the headmistress. As for the girls, Sandy writes a much touted psychology book and then becomes a nun! Jenny goes on to become an actress. Mary becomes a shorthand typist, but then dies in a hotel fire. Eunice becomes a nurse, and Monica a scientist. Rose, the sexual one, ends up marrying a business man and having a family. It turns out, even though the boys in school always talked about having sex with Rose, none of them ever did and Rose did not have sex with any of the boys in school! Talk about preconceived notions and undeserved labels! This book was on two Top 100 lists, Time's and the Modern Library's, but I'm not really sure it belonged there. I wasn't super impressed by it, but it was pretty good....but very short...only 137 pages. In any event, it's checked off my list now. :-)