The Comforters is the first novel by Scottish

Scottish people

The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...

 author Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark

Dame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...

, it drew on her own experiences as a recent convert to Catholicism

Catholicism

Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....

 and a three-month period when she suffered hallucinations whilst taking the appetite suppresent Dexedrine. Although completed in late 1955 it was not published until 1957, a mutual friend novelist Alan Barnsley

Gabriel Fielding

Gabriel Fielding , pen name of Alan Gabriel Barnsley, was a British novelist whose works include: In the Time of Greenbloom, The Birthday King, Through Streets Broad and Narrow and The Women of Guinea Lane.-Biography:Fielding's father, George, was an Anglican vicar at Hexham...

 having sent the proof's to Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...

 who was at the time writing The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is a novel first published in 1957 by English writer Evelyn Waugh. Strong parallels may be drawn between events in the novel overtaking the eponymous protagonist, Gilbert Pinfold, and episodes in the author's own life...

which also dealt with drug-induced hallucinations he had experieced. Waugh's and other's positive responses prompted Macmillan

Macmillan Publishers

Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...

 to publish the novel in February 1957. The novel was an an immediate success and enabled Muriel Spark to give up editorial work and devote herself to full-time creative writing.

Plot Introduction

The central character is Caroline Rose, a novelist recently converted to Catholicism who on returning from a retreat starts hearing voices and the sound of a typewriter. The words she heard appearing to co-incide exactly with her own thoughts. Meanwhile her boyfriend Lawrence has been staying with his grandmother in Sussex and discovers she is involved in smuggling...

External links

• The typing ghost review by Ali Smith
  Ali Smith
  Ali Smith is a British writer.She was born to working-class parents, raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at the University of Aberdeen and then at Newnham College, Cambridge, for a PhD that was never finished. She worked as a lecturer at University of...
  
   in The Guardian
  The Guardian
  The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...