 what a bore..
Try Barbara Pym instead...or Penelope Lively. THis was so boring I didn't even finish it, and its not that long!! Maybe if I wasn't such a fan of Barbara Pym I might have had more patience, but this was really not worth even putting up with for 180 pages. Try "Excellent Women" instead.
 very charming
Mrs Hawkins is an overweight, young widow living in 1950's London. She lives in a rooming house with a variety of characters, including Wanda, a Polish seamstress with a secret.
Mrs Hawkins works in a publishing firm and is persistently approached by Hector Bartlett, who wants her to assist him with getting his book published. Mrs Hawkins considers him a hack writer and insults him by calling him a 'pisseur de copie' a urinator of journalistic copy. She makes an enemy of not only him, but his benefactress, the author, Emma Loy. Emma gets Mrs Hawkins fired from her publishing firm, but just before it goes bankrupt due to the fraudulent activities of her former boss.
Mrs Hawkins then gets another job at a more prestigious publishing firm of Mackintosh and Tooley. She is surprised to be hired over more qualified applicants until eventually she notices that all of their employees seem to have some sort of deformities, hers is that she is obese. This leads her to immediately go on a diet.
In the meantime, her neighbor Wanda has received a letter from someone threatening to turn her in for tax evasion, and then gets phone calls with other threats. Mrs Hawkins is convinced that Wanda knows who is behind this, but has more things on her mind. She know longer wants to be Mrs Hawkins, but Nancy, a young woman with a new lover. But she can't shake the irritating presence of her nemesis, Hector.
This book was short but delightful, filled with eccentric characters. I can't believe this is the first Muriel Sparks book I have ever read. I love her dry, British wit.
Sir Alec's utterance and subsequent words of praise were like the cry of a bird in distress, far away across a darkening lake. I had a sense he was offering things abominable to me, like decaffeinated coffee or coitus interuptus...
It is hard to categorize this novel; part mystery, drama, humor, amusing life observations. I am definitely going to read more books by this highly respected author.
my rating 4/5
 'Pisseur de Copie'
This book is utterly delightful. It is a very crisp portrayal of a witty, willful woman and a convoluted personal situation that befalls her. Her is someone who not only takes control of her life, but understands and accepts all of her decisions with equanimity.
Mrs. Hawkins is a war widow and a person of huge bulk. She works as a literary agent and editor. One day while in the park, she calls one Hector Bartlett a 'pisseur de copie'. She will not retract that statement. Instead, she proclaims it with relish. What transpires because of this is the heart of the story. It is witty, acerbic and wonderfully well-crafted. It has plots within plots within plots, all skillfully rendered and multi-layered.
Hector is insipid and cruel and, indeed, a 'pisseur doe copie'. His lover, a famous writer, costs Mrs. Hawkins several jobs. He has a personal vendetta against her. She is more than his match - - in fact, he's just a small toadlike annoyance to her. However, he wreaks disaster on others in his attempt to enact his vendetta.
A quick read, a sharp wit
I agree with jt from New Jersey. I picked up "Far Cry" based on its review in the NY Time Book Review in 1986 (front page coverage). If you simply accept Mrs. Hawkins at face value you will fall in love with the setting, the time and Mrs. Hawkins approach to life.
Perhaps the book has a special place in my heart because I read it in a hotel bar overlooking the Arno in Florence while my pregnant wife was resting upstairs. I still reread the book and remember the bar. Funny.
Fun read but this book is being oversold
I enjoyed "A Far Cry from Kensington" and recommend it. It's an entertaining story about an overweight young editor who matures in many ways (weight loss, new romance) over the course of the novel and exhibits strength of character in overcoming various tribulations. When she puts down a toadying literary hanger-on, this unpleasant person becomes something like a stalker. A good yarn; the last chapterlet is bang-up. It's one of those novels, which I think are pretty rare, where the last two pages are the best part.
I am a big Muriel Spark fan -- I mourned her passing earlier this year -- and was very interested in a book that is generally accepted as a companion novel to the brilliant "Loitering with Intent", one of my favorites. I was particularly intrigued given the reviews on amazon. So I want to caution prospective readers that there's no way that this is up to Spark's best work. It simply doesn't have the resonance or mysterious allusiveness that some of Spark's other books have. It's kind of a throwaway, in fact. So I think some of the reviewers below are getting carried away and overpraising the novel. Open it with reasonable expectations and you have an entertaining, intriguing tale ahead of you.
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