The Centaur vs The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: Which Should You Read?
Both live on shelves: Teacher-student relationships, Teachers, Fiction
The Centaur
In a small Pennsylvania town in the late 1940s, schoolteacher George Caldwell yearns to find some meaning in his life. Alone with his teenage son for three days in a blizzard, Caldwell sees his son grow and change as he…
vs
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark’s timeless classic about a controversial teacher who deeply marks the lives of a select group of students in the years leading up to World War II "Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine…
1 film adaptation
The verdict
- Ratings are close across the board — any is a safe pick by score.
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie has the widest readership — 63571 ratings behind its score.
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie runs the darker storyline; The Centaur stays the lighter read.
How to choose
Scores by source
| The Centaur | The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie | |
|---|---|---|
| Goodreads | 3.7 (5054) | 3.7 (63571) |
| Hardcover | 3.9 (9) | 3.5 (88) |
| Google Books | — | 3.0 (245) |
| Apple Books | 3.5 (10) | 3.5 (42) |
Reception
| The Centaur | The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie | |
|---|---|---|
| Ratings | 5054 | 63571 |
| Editions | 87 | 59 |
| Film adaptations | 1 | 1 |
| Want to read | 7388 | 59545 |
| Reading it now | 190 | 1978 |
| Written reviews | 374 | 5380 |
| Wikipedia attention | 852 | 4929 |
| Pages | 281 | 179 |