The Driver's Seat (New Directions Paperbook)

too overdone. too random. not enough substance, really.

Wow, reading some of the other reader reviews, I started to wonder if we had read the same book. I've enjoyed several other books by Muriel Spark, including A Far Cry from Kensington, The Girls of Slender Means, Memento Mori, and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. This one, however, had none of the wry

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humor I've come to expect from Spark. The main character, Lise, is an ill-tempered woman who puts on airs. She barks at a salesgirl who tout a dress's stain resistant fabric, claiming she is insulted by the thought that she would ever spill food on her clothing. She pairs a dress with a bright yellow bodice and multicolored skirt (predominantly purple) with a red and white striped coat and belittles others for not realizing how well dressed she is and how well the patterns and colors go together. She leaves for a trip to a southern country (Italy, I believe), telling anyone who will listen that she is meeting her boyfriend--but she has no boyfriend, she just assumes she will know her "type" when she sees him. She fixates on two different men during the plane ride, neither of whom have any interest in her. Some readers have said that Lise is having a mental breakdown, but I saw no evidence that her behavior, for her, was in any way out of the ordinary.: she's just an eccentric, artificial, self-important woman. We learn early on that, due to her stupidity (or is it her secret desire?), she will end up dead. Can't say that I was sorry to see her go.

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Drives ya relentlessly to the only conclusion the cast can offer. A ruthless, sad and nastily satisfying book.

STELLAR job of twisting this one! Dame Spark takes us on a twisting, turning ride to the ultimate ending by turning the classic murder mystery story inside out, & approaching it by describing the last few days of Lise' life. All we ever know of her is her first name, we don't know where she comes

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from, just that she worked for 18 years at some firm, & went on a holiday to Italy, where she does some strange things, like stuffing her passport in between the cushions of a cab & knowingly letting the cab drive off without it, befriending random strangers & then stealing their cars, telling everyone she meets different stories about her life, etc. This was a book I couldn't put down, & finished inside of 2 HOURS. It's a short novella, but is eerie, creepy, & riveting.

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This is one of the answers I sometimes give to the extremely difficult question "What's your favourite book?" Spark has an ability to let the language of her book just barely scratch the surface, leaving tons of questions, riddles an open ends. Never more so than in this seemingly small and

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everyday story about a woman going on holiday. And yet this strange little book is so dense, so eerie and so perfectly composed, it leaves you satisfied and with chills running down your back. I've read it three times, and will certainly return to it more than once. A great introduction to a great author.

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Lise, a suicidally unhappy woman in a dead end job, travels to southern Italy to find someone to murder her. Lise is what might be referred to as a "bitch on wheels." She lies needlessly, casually steals cars, and perceives personal insults in matters that have nothing really to do with her. (She

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goes ballistic early on when told that a dress she is trying on is made of stain resistant fabric. This she interprets to mean she is a sloppy eater.) My favorite passages in this novella include the seduction of Lise undertaken by a macrobiotic diet fanatic, Bill, whose his absurd monologues on Yin foods and Yang foods are hilarious. There is also Mrs. Friedke, an octogenarian who Lise bumps into, who tags along with Lise during shopping. This excursion devolves in time to a colloquy on who might or might not be "Lise's man," with Mrs. Friedke blithely oblivious to the real purpose this fellow is to serve. THE DRIVER'S SEAT served as one of Martin Amis' models for his novel LONDON FIELDS. In that much longer book, another woman, Nicola Six, sets out to methodically locate her murderer. Needless to say, both women are successful. There are passages in both books, too, which self-describe them as "whydoits" as opposed to whodunits.

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Sadly this tale was an example of a personality clash, I could appreciate it but not like it. The writing style expertly reflects the main character: with clean, matter of fact sentences ones but
felt short and skittish, even though when I look back aren't *that* short. The character was too far

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removed from my experience, I could not relate at all. Perhaps the tale was set too much in the 70s with alienation of modern, secular life amd something that I cannot share constantly connected to the world as I am. The impact of the 'why' dunnit plot also sadly fell flat, as I quite familiar with it, good ideas never die after all.

I must stress that its not a bad book though, the twisting of modernity and it's freedoms, the rejection of standard female story tropes. There is no white knight here and family or love is not a glib panacea (which is refreshing even if men get short shrift).

So I will be trying more Murial Spark but this one was not for me.

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I'm not entirely sure I'd say I enjoyed this, so much as was intrigued by, and greatly admired, it. It strikes me as being very much of its time, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I was initially hooked by the opening, and felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up at the airport when I

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realised Lise was going so far out of her way to be noticed and remembered by so many strangers. I suspect if I'd read it in the 70s, I'd have been more unsettled by the ending, but having my shock-o-metre set so high over the years by reading perhaps a bit too much modern crime fiction, I felt the ending came a too fast and, ultimately a bit too pat.

However in purely intellectual terms, you feel you are in the stylistic/intellectual realms of Ionesco and Vaclav Havel, and also fleetingly of Katharina Blum.

However, as John Lanchester says in his fascinating introduction, it's nigh on impossible to discuss this novella properly without resorting to spoilers, so I'll leave it at this: the time you devote to this will be well-rewarded.

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This novella is pretty strange... it is almost a crime story but not exactly. Lise, the main character, seems to be suffering from a nervous breakdown.

It's an odd little story with a surprise twist at the end that makes you want to reread the entire thing wondering where you missed the clues.

The trick of challenging the reader's assumptions by reversing the conventions of a particular literary genre is one that's difficult to pull off in anything longer than a short story (and even there it can seem like a joke that goes stale before it reaches its punchline, as Martin Amis has

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demonstrated). I think Muriel Spark just about gets away with it here. She doesn't throw the trick in our face, but gives us several chapters to work out for ourselves what she's up to, and she doses the comedy very neatly so that things never become merely silly: we are always kept aware that there is something very nasty going on behind all the absurdity. It is very much of its time: we would probably throw up our arms in horror and call it tasteless if it had been written in the last decade (or by a man, for that matter), but I think it still bears reading today.

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As I'm reading I can't help but notice something is amiss. Something is not quite right with Lise, although I can't quite put my finger on it. But by the end....Wow. How very unsettling. But in a fantastic way. Just wow.

Weird. Interesting premise, a pre-mystery with plenty of psycho dialog where characters inexplicably appear, act oddly, talk past each other. One wonders whether one is reading a dream from which the dreamer will wake in the end. Not especially enjoyable unless you like 1960's clueless, demanding,

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English-speaking tourist does Italy scene, back in the old days of prop jets, before facebook, and cellphones, and airport security. Thankfully a short book, surreal, with a properly gory, and perversely 'happy' ending.

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This book scared me! It is short and sweet.

So she lays the trail, presently to be followed by Interpol and elaborated upon with due art by the journalists of Europe for the few days it takes for her identity to be established.

Lise heads off on holiday to Italy, dressed in brightly clashing, clashing clothes and behaving deliberately badly,

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so that everyone she meets will remember her when they hear of her death. She also takes pains to hide her identity, discarding her passport and telling lies about her nationality and job, so that her death will be news for longer. Only Bill the macrobiotics bore and the English lord are so self-centred that they don't notice that anything is wrong with Lise, and they are eventually dismissed my her as not being 'her type' as she searches the city for someone to kill her.

I read this book about twenty years ago and always remembered how unnerving it was, so when I found that the library had the audiobook I decided to re-read it. Judy Dench's narration was great, and I especially liked her contemptuous tone when Lise was dismissing men as 'not her type'. Elizabeth Taylor starred in a film version in 1974 that looks absolutely bonkers!

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Some one saw me reading this in public and joked that I was reading a child's book because it is such a thin book. This in no child's book. Such a dark, and heavy story about a woman who seems driven to make herself a murder victim. We have no access to any character's inner life. The woman is

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self-aware but the author chose not to share any inner dialog. A senseless death of a particularly troubling sort. Was the author writing an anti-English murder mystery? The reader sees the events happen but with no motives expressed and the sense of everything being all right is definitely not affirmed.

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A nifty novella with a Gothic feel. It begins with Lise, a young woman about to embark on a holiday abroad, taking grave offense when a salesgirl mentions that the dress she is about to buy is "stain resistant". From there Lise's behavior continues to border on the bizarre, as she seems to

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purposely draw attention to herself, causing some people to pull away, and others to be drawn into her circle. We learn early on what the outcome of her story will be; following the "how" is grimly fascinating. The "who" probably ought to be apparent. The "where" is soon revealed. The "why" is never explored.

Review written in November, 2013

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Short, sharp and disturbing.

Muriel Spark's novels often provide us with writing that communicates on the basis of what is not said. We see the main character, Lise, revealed through description of what she does and how others react to her in this intense second-person present tense novel. An absolutely treacherous and

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mean-spirited woman, Lise is a completely despicable person who is definitely in the driver's seat.

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A thoroughly unpleasant book about an unpleasant woman, seemingly, on a search for a lover. Even though the farther you read in this very short book (just over 100 pages), the more you suspect this woman is not simply unpleasant, but clearly deranged, the ending is still disturbing. It leaves a bad

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taste in your mouth, not because of what happens, but because of the way her actions seem to exonerate all men in the story. Somehow, she wasn't just asking for it, she was demanding it. I didn't like it.

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Driver's Seat abounds in a mordant wit. It doesn't admit much. The details revealed are rather baffling. That opacity should charge the narrative, maybe keep the reader off balance. Such remains inconclusive, the verdict is out. The fact that we know the ending should mitigate tension. It certainly

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doesn't. Muriel Spark delivers no fire in this novella, instead a most seductive smoke. There are whispers of Amis in this quest.

There is something modern, something concerning the consumer at the core of this tale. Do we all die by choice?

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Postmodern noir à la Pascal Garnier sans humour. Everyday setting. Mentally disturbed protagonist. Chance encounters and re-encounters. Unreliable narrator. A death. Possibly "enjoyable" reading in the moment, but ultimately forgettable.

An unusual read where you know the ending fairly early in the book, but the path to it is unclear right to that grim end, and nobody seems entirely sane.

The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark is a short novel about a woman who leaves behind her dull office job in London and heads to a warm country on vacation. She appears to be searching for a man, but has great difficulty finding a man that is “her type”. The story is rather strange and this

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reader had some difficulty in pinning down the main character’s motivation, but looking back upon the pages, I can see that clues were scattered throughout the book.

Although written in a light, almost tongue-in-cheek manner, this is a dark story about a woman who is clearly not quite right in the head. She spends her first day on vacation by picking up an eccentric old lady and wandering the town, looking for her type of man. She is not very likeable, and can be very annoying but the author is so skilled that the story works and the reader becomes involved.

Muriel Spark has written a book where it is impossible to empathize with the main character, in fact, her over-the-top actions made this reader rather uncomfortable. Yet this uncomfortable, awkward novel is so well written that you find yourself immediately engaged by this inventive and unusual story.

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