The Finishing School

College Sunrise is a vaguely disreputable finishing school in Switzerland. Rowland Mahler and his wife, Nina, run the school as a way to support themselves while he writes, somewhat falteringly, a novel. Enter seventeenyearold Chris Wiley, a literary prodigy whose novelinprogress already has publishers interested. The result is a mix of keen envy and a game of cat and mouse not free of sexual jealousy and attraction. Here Muriel Spark displays her keen instinct for hypocrisy, selfdelusion, and moral ambiguity.