The rest of the characters are well drawn with sharp social satire; from the young thugs, the disillusioned members of the typing pool, the failing to cope director to the ambitious young women.

And that's pretty much all I have to say about the plot part of this book. If you're interested in what Muriel Spark can do with such an age-old theme, you can read this short book for yourself.Quirky and rather brief novel which I rather enjoyed. It is part fable with a spot of magic realism, a dash of humour, some nice twists and clever observations of life in the early 1960s.

Dame Muriel Spark, DBE was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Does he stir up south London lives, or is it simply that the social strictures inhibiting the sexuality of the characters circa 1960 are a pressure cooker with a failing gasket - it was just a question of time maybe in any case before the lid hits the ceiling? Then again with his Richard III shoulders (which render him unfit for National Service) perhaps he was scheming all along? There was I,' sang out an old man in the public bar, 'waiting at the church, waiting at the church.' As usual, Muriel Spark was enough over my head that I finished this highly comic novel and was not quite sure what I had just read.Wilt thou take this woman to be thy wedded wife?” with “ ‘No,’ Humphrey said, ‘to be quite frank, I won’t’ ”. Is he a Confessor, a Devil or both? Either way, he's behind the opening and closing notes of the ballad, where a man responds at his wedding to: One landlady out of a group of three said, ‘No, she’s a Dixie Morse. Crewe’s the stepfather. I know because she works at Meadows Meade in poor Miss Coverdale’s pool that was. Miss Coverdale told me about her. The fellow had a good position as a refrigerator engineer.’

Quirky, farcical, and darkly comic, it sure was entertaining. But, for me, seeing as the bar was raised higher in other novels, It isn't one of her absolute greats.Spark is very skilled in her use of dialogue to convey the story, a technique that gives the novella a sense of closeness or immediacy, almost as if the reader is eavesdropping on a conversation between friends. The saga of Dixie’s abandonment is relayed through gossip at the pub, with various locals chipping in, adding their two pennies’ worth to the anecdote as it passes along. Someone enticed me to read this by comparing it to William Trevor's The Children of Dynmouth. Ah, that siren's call... "this book is just like one you love..." The barmaid said: ‘It was only a few weeks ago. You saw it in the papers. That chap who left the girl at the altar, that’s him. She lives up the Grove. Crewe by name.’ I think I would belong, in the writing of prose, to a literary tradition which is connected with the belletrists like Max Beerbohm, a humourist. On the level of thought, Pritchett and that sort of fantasy.... Also, you wouldn't think so, but I owe a lot to Proust. I read Proust over and over again.