Killing Her Softly A measured, sympathetic—and ultimately damning— portrait of the 20th century’s most wickedly funny novelist By JOSEPH O'NEIL First Paragraph: (for the full article see The Atlantic Monthly) MURIEL SPARK WAS controlled by a terror of being controlled, a terror so unlimited it extended to staircases: she didn’t like to descend in front of a man for fear of being pushed. Now Spark is dead. She cannot, as she did in life, defend herself, if necessary by scaring a person into servitude—for ultimately, with few exceptions and excluding her dealings with cats, the only relationship Spark could tolerate was that of principal and agent, with herself as the mercurial principal. She is no longer the boss. We can approach her on terms of our choosing, and she won’t be able to do anything about it. We can, if we so choose, give her a murderous little shove.