The Very Fine Clock
By Muriel Spark and Edward Gorey
Reviewed by Lara Cain Gray
The Very Fine Clock is a new edition of a whimsical fable first published in 1968. It’s written by Scottish novelist and poet Muriel Spark, best known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and for general irreverence in her dealings with the establishment. For her first foray into children’s books, she paired up with Edward Gorey, whose oeuvre includes 116 books written and illustrated by himself plus over 500 he illustrated for other writers. Gorey is renowned for highly detailed pen and ink drawings that are often called ‘macabre’. How and why these two stellar creatives were matched for publication in this instance I’m not sure, but together they use this story to thumb their noses at academic pomposity and remind us to be true to what’s in our hearts.
Ticky is a very efficient Swiss clock belonging to one Professor Horace John Morris. Ticky keeps perfect time, and the Professor winds him up at exactly fourteen minutes past 10 each night. In this way, they develop an understanding of each other’s best ways of working and a friendship grows. Every Thursday, the Professor entertains four Professor friends. Each is ‘clever and famous’ and they chat into the wee hours about ‘interesting things like the moon and the stars’. But although the Professors are very clever, they agree that Ticky must be the cleverest of them all, for he is the only one who can tell the time without looking at a clock. He should be henceforth known as Professor Ticky!
Ticky is flattered, and is quite aware of his own brilliance, but declines the honour. “…I am afraid that if I were to become Professor Ticky, I would lose the friendship of all the other clocks in the house.” Ticky and the other clocks communicate through the day about the upstairs/downstairs goings on: he’s especially fond of Pepita, a ‘charming pearly orphan’ in the spare room who ‘would not know how to say the word professor’.
Spark had been a writer-in-residence at Rutgers University in the US shortly before she wrote this book and did not hold hierarchies and slavish punctuality in high regard. Ticky tells the Professors that he does not want to appear ‘too grand’ for the other clocks. Luckily, this only confirms their belief in his good character! The whole tale is perhaps a tongue in cheek statement on class and education, from the unique perspective of a Scottish woman settling into the mores of the US university environment. But who is the reader?
For today’s children, this will likely feel quite strange; it’s wordy and old fashioned, with an unconventional narrative structure. The art is intense and while not particularly macabre is brimming with hidden details that might reveal an entirely different story. I recommend this to older readers – including adults – who can revel in the eccentric illustrations and either ponder the deeper connotations or sit comfortably with the absurd.
