{"product_id":"2026200016893-secondhand-the-bachelors","title":"The Bachelors","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSet amidst the grey, fog-laden streets of 1950s London, The Bachelors is a razor-sharp comedy of manners that chronicles the interlocking lives of a cast of unmarried men, each trapped in their own peculiar orbit of loneliness, self-delusion, and social farce. At the novel's centre is a fraudulent spiritualist named Patrick Seton, whose criminal trial for forgery draws together a web of bachelors — solitary figures whose bachelorhood is less a lifestyle choice than a symptom of deeper moral and spiritual paralysis.\n\nMuriel Spark writes with a wit as precise and unsparing as a surgical blade, her prose stripped of sentimentality yet alive with darkly comic energy. The Bachelors stands as a masterful satire of mid-century English society, interrogating themes of faith, guilt, free will, and the performative nature of identity. Spark — a Catholic convert — infuses the narrative with a theological undertow that quietly unsettles the comedic surface, leaving the reader to wonder whether any of her characters are truly free, or merely acting out roles already written for them.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49269345091803,"sku":"2026200016893-SECONDHAND","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/8d320eaf-1376-4ce2-a39c-a2c31f59d57e.png?v=1788998910","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200016893-secondhand-the-bachelors","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}