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The Driver's Seat

Muriel Spark,

John Lanchester (Introduction)

3.63 · Rating details · 6,179 ratings · 897 reviews

Lise is thin, neither good-looking nor bad-looking. One day she walks out of her office, acquires a gaudy new outfit, adopts a girlier tone of voice, and heads to the airport to fly south. On the plane she takes a seat between two men. One is delighted with her company, the other is deeply perturbed. So begins an unnerving journey into the darker recesses of human nature.

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Paperback, 107 pages

Published April 27th 2006 by Penguin Books (first published 1970)

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Rating details

· 6,179 ratings · 897 reviews

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Aug 15, 2010 Petra-X Off having adventures rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-100-reviews, fiction, reviewed

Was it murder or was it suicide? And did that matter to the 'heroine'? This is a novella, a quick read and perhaps one that is better read at one sitting so that the tension can build. Its totally upfront, we know what is going to happen a quarter of the way through the book and it just remains for the story to play itself out. How it does is what you think of after you've finished the book, and in fact that is probably the most enjoyable bit. Its very clever and creepy creepy creepy.

This is a v ...more

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Jan 18, 2020 Adam Dalva rated it really liked it

Super fast, gripping novella about a manic woman (and Spark writes her mania brilliantly) traveling to a southern country in search of a man to, well, I won't spoil it. The action is fast and funny, the contemporary descriptions sharp (of course - it's Spark), and though we learn where we're going early on, it's a mystery about how we will get there. The story relies on one coincidence too many, and a middle section in a mall drags*

*here's an aside about novella middles, in the middle of this no ...more

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Feb 27, 2020 Cecily rated it really liked it

Shelves: solitary-protagonist, short-stories-and-novellas, unreliable-narrators, mental-health-victorian-madness, relationships-twisted, detective-mystery-crime

Emergency!

On the Saturday morning of a weekend away, I finished a wonderful book (Girl, Woman, Other). But I couldn’t find the book I was sure I’d packed to read next. The prospect of a weekend without a book felt like not having a wallet, glasses, or knickers! I admit to a few tears and even shaking. On our way to lunch, we briefly stopped at a second-hand bookshop. I needed a book I was confident I’d enjoy and that would fit in my small handbag. I had recently enjoyed my first Spark, The Prim ...more

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Aug 05, 2011 Stephen rated it liked it

Shelves: literature, 1970-1979, classics, audiobook, classics-european, novellas

A disturbed woman's journey of conscious self-annihilation...a perverse fairy tale in which the "prince" becomes a vehicle of destruction...and a brutally piercing statement on female victimization and empowerment.

Yeah...there's a lot to admire in this work.

That said, I must admit that the story didn't engage me emotionally the way a work dealing with themes of this magnitude usually will. My thinking was engaged, and my philosophical curiosity was certainly feeling it, but my compassion, my inn ...more

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Sep 06, 2016 Lisa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, sparkling

Foreshadowing:

My apologies, dear Muriel Spark, I can see a comparison forcing its way into this review of your short masterpiece, as I found a catastrophic similarity to a work not worthy of being mentioned in your presence. I am sorry, but as you know, sometimes things just have to happen, we know it, and we can't do anything about the stains we will leave behind. It is not your fault, your story was here first, you have been innocently assaulted by a brute! My only excuse is that your lovely ...more

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Jun 20, 2019 Agnieszka rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, reviewed, short-stories-and-novellas, read-more-women, disturbing, 2019, spark

My first Muriel Spark. She got a lot attention from my fellow readers lately and I’ve been curious her myself for a while too. Hmm, well, hmm… Not sure however how I feel with this short novel at all. I don’t mind quirkiness, in fact I’m very fond of it, likewise dark humour and somewhat morbid fascination with death or sense of alienation and destination. Muriel Spark is very economical, she can pack a lot in her writing indeed, and as I know most of her works could be defined as short stories ...more

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May 31, 2019 Violet wells rated it really liked it

A couple of years ago we were all told in Britain to take back control. But when people are licensed to express openly what they feel it's sometimes a shock to discover just how much hankering after ugliness there is in the human spirit. Social media too has borne this out. It's all very well for popular cinema to keep churning out these narratives about the beauty of the human spirit but really they only tell half the story. You might say it's that other half of the story which always interests A couple of years ago we were all told in Britain to take back control. But when people are licensed to express openly what they feel it's sometimes a shock to discover just how much hankering after ugliness there is in the human spirit. Social media too has borne this out. It's all very well for popular cinema to keep churning out these narratives about the beauty of the human spirit but really they only tell half the story. You might say it's that other half of the story which always interests Muriel Spark. Her characters are often fermenting with disappointment, with the realisation they've been lied to (like most of us they rarely admit to lying to themselves); they are always seeking to take back control of their lives. The problem is, there's usually something corrupt at the heart of their aspirations. They are usually deluded. One morning Muriel Spark's heroine Lise, who has worked in an accountant's office since she was eighteen - no wonder she's reached breaking point! - decides to take back control.

The opening scene has Lise choosing a new outfit for her impending holiday. To watch someone shopping for clothes provides such revealing insights into his or her character that I'm surprised it isn't used more by novelists as an introductory device for showing us who we are dealing with! However, the comic exuberance with which Spark writes this scene was indicative of the problem I had with this book as a whole. Its comic tone was pitched one note too high for me. It's self-consciously and relentlessly a very absurd novel.

The running joke in this book is of a world turned inside out. It begins on the first page with our heroine wilfully choosing clothes that don't suit her and reaches its comic peak when a women, referring to hippies, bemoans the clamouring of men for equality with their insistence on long hair and jewellery. "If we don't look lively,' she says, 'they will be taking over the homes and the children, and sitting about having chats while we go and fight to defend them and work to keep them." A woman's quest for love is, ultimately, the dynamic that Spark here turns on its head.
In all her books Spark is ingenious in her manner of managing narrative time. Same story here. Throughout the narrative she deftly moves the clock forward and backward. Informs us early on what awaits Lise, to begin with in the form of teasing "spoilers": we are told a woman who meets Lise at the airport will be questioned the following day by the police who are trying to establish who Lise is. Then a couple of pages later that Interpol are involved in the investigations. However, you realise the "spoiler" increases the tension rather than dissipating it.

I'm not sure if the theme of this novel has any precedents; it certainly has a couple of acolytes - Elizabeth Bowen's Eva Trout and Martin Amis' London Fields (both, in my opinion, slightly better novels). My least favourite of her books so far but I'd still recommend it.
...more

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Sep 15, 2019 Gaurav rated it really liked it

The Driver’s Seat is an usual story- usual to Muriel Spark, but unusual in every possible sense to the world, for its strangeness is not something which I’ve previously encountered. I finished the book in just two sittings separated by mundane office hours but that doesn’t bring any solace to me to get rid of weird taste it leaves me with. Having said that you cannot deny that Spark was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent- in a word -the crème de la crème, as mentioned by Ian Rankin. The Driver’s Seat is an usual story- usual to Muriel Spark, but unusual in every possible sense to the world, for its strangeness is not something which I’ve previously encountered. I finished the book in just two sittings separated by mundane office hours but that doesn’t bring any solace to me to get rid of weird taste it leaves me with. Having said that you cannot deny that Spark was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent- in a word -the crème de la crème, as mentioned by Ian Rankin. Spark constructed her world with intelligence, relish and extraordinary precision of a surgeon. The novel starts with an extraordinary opening as most of Spark’s novels as Lise storms out of a shop announcing "I won't be insulted" after being told that the dress she has been trying on is stain-resistant. That’s how she respond to new freedom of 60s- the travel, the clothes, the sexual opportunities, new cults in diet and religion. She is definitely odd, as she reacts with an irrationality bordering on hysteria to a suggestion that she might buy a dress made of a new fabric which doesn’t stain. However, if one looks at underlying tones of the narrative, one won’t fail to recognize that Lise rejects the idea of not being immaculate.

The book is a bleak comedy about the world itself built around tragedy of the central character- Lise, in which she throws around every set norm of the world. But underlying these expressions of frustration, irritation we come across to realize an existential leap, perhaps an act of faith, though of the darkest possible kind. We know beforehand what will the fate of Lise or the book per se but the narrative moves forward as to tell us when and how. It may be said to be the depiction of a malignant will which is built upon desire of self-harm. And that is how she uses her freedom. We know right from the start that Lise is abnormal, that world may be strange place to her but that doesn’t provide any solace since the more pertinent question is who is in the driver’s seat, who could be made responsible to the stream of events as they fold out. Ostensibly, one would say Lise but that would be very naïve of an answer, perhaps not to the standards of Muriel Spark who was outrageously inventive and talented, of course. Could it be one of the ancillary characters of the book, who might have forced Lise to do what she eventually does? Or could it be relate to God/ faith as we know it or probably it may be accounted to the author herself, who is perhaps the God in the world created by her; Spark may not approve of it as she used to maintain that a novelist’s duty is to make it clear that her version of reality is just a version, a fiction per se. But what about the question of driver’s seat, we may not be able to say it clearly however, one thing we may proclaim clearly is that none of these answers bring any comfort to the reader.

Though the book is about Lise’s freedom which she expresses through her modern choices but the modernity depicted in the novel has many layered feathers which presents The Driver’s Seat in a cruel, violent and dark way. The world of Spark is hugely imaginative and perfectly resonates with T. S. Eliot’s famous line- ’humankind cannot bear too much reality’ as we see the central character of the book is delusion, and even the other characters such as Bill or the person who met Lise in the airplane may not be escaped by the ultimate stroke of the author as he immediately got terrified of Lise even though he was seeing her face for the very first time.

This is my second read of Muriel Spark after The prime of Miss Brodie however, both novels are completely different to each other which underlines the extravagant talent of Spark. The book may come across as a complete shocker to some but I guess it’s been written in that way like a metaphysical testament of human nature by Spark since the regular plots have shortcomings as they ignore human nature to an extent and also persist in leaving questions unasked. But in Spark’s world what are never short of are questions right from the very first line.

Highly recommended
4.5/5 ...more

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Apr 26, 2019 Fionnuala added it · review of another edition

Shelves: spark-reviews

So brief it could be a short story, so tightly wound it could be a mouse-trap, so visually powerful it could be a psychedelic trip, so frighteningly memorable it could be a Hitchcock film.

But it's a Muriel Spark book in which many of her usual structural elements are present, elements such as formidability, isolation, predestination, mania and murder, though it's all ferociously pared back as in the mid-twentieth century architectural movement known as Brutalism.

I'll leave it at that. ...more

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Aug 02, 2014 Paul Bryant rated it did not like it

Shelves: novels

Muriel Spark had enough brains for two normal people but this little novel was almost completely stupid. It was like a terrible joke whose heavily adumbrated punchline is a tiresome and obvious inversion of normal reality, like a banana slipping on the skin of a man. You carry on reading this book, and it is very readable, and doesn't take long, because you can't believe what you are suspecting will be the outcome will really be the outcome, and it is, that's all, no explanation, no nothing. Spa ...more

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Sep 22, 2016 ·Karen· added it

Shelves: brits, waaaa

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

I tell you, you're on your own with this one. I cannae help. Don't come here looking for an interpretation, analysis, outline, summary or evaluation. I havenae a clue what she was up to either.

Naw, and three times it is I've read it the noo, can you believe that? THREE TIMES. Well, it's very short. Naw, that's the thing, it doesnae help. In fact it just gets more confusing, cos you keep on finding wee dots that just wullnae join up, d'ya ken? I have this theory
Abandon hope all ye who enter here

I tell you, you're on your own with this one. I cannae help. Don't come here looking for an interpretation, analysis, outline, summary or evaluation. I havenae a clue what she was up to either.

Naw, and three times it is I've read it the noo, can you believe that? THREE TIMES. Well, it's very short. Naw, that's the thing, it doesnae help. In fact it just gets more confusing, cos you keep on finding wee dots that just wullnae join up, d'ya ken? I have this theory that Ms Spark was actually quite often really cruel to her characters, and here she goes that one step further and is cruel to her readers too. She'll be sat up there on her own wee cloud somewhere laughing like a drain at all the cahoots. You know, people trying to make sense of this nonsense? The secret is: THERE ISN'T ANY.

Naw, she doesnae gie us any help. It's all just weirdly bizarre.
Funny? Aye, well, you'd need a right warped sense of humour, but yes, in a painful way it is, aye. Ye ken, that kind of laughter that just releases your anxiety, because you don't quite believe what you're seeing? That kind.

Aye, of course I thought about it. And tae begin with I thought it was a feminist tract; woman goes in search of The One. It disnae do her much good (to put it mildly) when she finds The One. On the way to finding The One she is assailed by two lecherous males with come on lines that are hard to credit: "On this diet the Regional Master for Northern Europe recommends one orgasm a day. At least."
But there's so much other stuff that disnae tie up, so I chucked that idea. Then I read this, well, most of it anyway. Based very much on Barthes, and claiming that any narrative that, like this one, explodes narrative and confounds readerly expectations is basically just doing that one job: showing us how narrative works. Or doesnae in this case.

all literature...should be a narrative, a flow of words in the service of an event which ‘makes its way’ toward its denouement or its conclusion: not to ‘narrate’ its object is, for the Book, to commit suicide. (Barthes)

So here we have a Book Suicide.

Buying it was fun though! Aye, this is one I actually picked up in a real life bookshop. Real bookshops are irresistible to me, even when I'm just visiting ma Mam and Dad with weight restricted carry-on luggage only. But I knew this was due up soon at an on-line book group I belong to, it's extremely thin and lightweight, so without further investigation I picked it up and carried it in my wee hot hands to the young man at the pay desk. Who gave me a distinctly strange look. "Well, I hope you're not too close to distraction", and a sardonic and sympathetic look at my daughter who would be the one left to care for her batty old Mum when Ms Spark had sent her off the rails. So I read out the blurb on the back: "Lise... driven to distraction ... leaves everything behind her, transforms herself into a laughing, garishly dressed temptress and flies abroad on the holiday of a lifetime. But her search for adventure, sex and new experience takes on a far darker significance...." Ha! I assured him that I got my kicks in books rather than real life, but now that I have been driven to distraction by Ms Spark, I'm beginning to think that he was more concerned about the deleterious effect on my sanity that the reading process would bring than the fear that Ms Spark might inspire me to try for the garish temptress look. I'm still working on that one.

...more

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Mar 24, 2011 William2 rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 20-ce, uk

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

flag 49 likes · Like · see review

Apr 15, 2019 Hugh rated it really liked it

Shelves: booker-shortlist, read-2019, modern-lit

What a strange, disconcerting novella, a kind of inverted crime novel and black comedy in which we know what seems to be the most important part of the ending very early.

The main protagonist is Lise, and we are introduced to her as she is arguing with a shop assistant trying to sell her a stain resistant dress. We can see from the start that Lise is at best eccentric and possibly mad, and we follow her demise almost in slow motion. As ever with Spark there are some very funny observations, but ...more

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Dec 20, 2019 Steven Godin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, great-britain

Muriel Spark featured a lot on my GR feeds in the last year or so, and I always wanted to join the party and read more of her myself, after being impressed with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I plan to do so in 2020, but hope whatever I do choose to read turns out better than this slim novel, which was written well enough, but wasn't as enjoyable as Jean Brodie. In fact, it was quite shocking and dark, as Spark delivers the story of Lise, who is

BIG SPOILER COMING UP!

seeking someone to do her in. ...more

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Oct 27, 2008 Mike rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book is loco, man. We're talking Miss Lonelyhearts-loco, Lime Twig-loco, Violent Bear It Away-loco. A death-haunted fever dream that hits you like absinthe and leaves you wide-eyed and paranoid. Loved it. ...more

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Sep 24, 2019 Kai rated it liked it

Shelves: classics, read-for-uni, owned

what did I just read

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Jan 01, 2015 Zanna rated it really liked it

Shelves: bechdel-pass

This is the sort of book that crawls into your heart. I read the first half of it on the train up to see my family for new year and I arrived inexplicably on edge; it took me a few minutes to realise I had to blame Spark. When I'd finished I put the book down like something too hot, and kept on reflecting on it for a while as I drifted off to sleep.

One thing I reinterpreted retrospectively was the reason for Spark's flat-toned foreshadowing. She was really playing with the concept of authorship ...more

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Aug 21, 2020 Teresa rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5

I’m not sure what to say about this work, different from any other Spark I’ve read. While reading I’d stop to think, did I read what I just thought I read? A few times, near the beginning, in reference to what the main character’s thinking, Spark writes Who knows? and at its last repetition, I thought, well, if you don’t know, I sure don’t.

My ultimate takeaway is this is a story of knowing your fate and embracing it, even facilitating it. Clues are dropped along the way that Lise knows why s ...more

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Mar 20, 2015 Duane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: guardian-1000, 2016-book-challenge, reviewed-books, rated-books

This is a strange little book, but one I won't soon forget. To say there is foreshadowing is an understatement; Spark tells you right away what happens to Lise, the star of the show. But that doesn't take away from the story at all. You can be sure of one thing if you pick this book up, Muriel Spark's writing will not disappoint. ...more

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Aug 13, 2020 Geevee rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

"I will not be insulted!" shouts our main character Lise. But why and what has caused her to react in this way to a young salesgirl?

From the outset in this novella Muriel Spark creates characters that are less than likeable but also complicated, hurt and abused. Lise's journey and denouement is a statement possibly of women, the sixties and her own place in a changing world as much as her direct situation and circumstance

The Driver's Seat is not one of Spark's best liked book or received books, ...more

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Aug 16, 2018 Sidharth Vardhan rated it really liked it

Shelves: list-1001, booker, list-guardian-1000, 3-english-world, woman-authors

A kind of novella that spends more time in your mind than on the page. Spark does it brilliantly by working under-the-hood. It is no spoiler that it is all about Lise executing her plan to kill herself. And so it is "it’s a whydunnit in q-sharp major and it has a message: never talk to the sort of girls that you wouldn’t leave lying about in your drawing-room for the servants to pick up." - the lines Lise used to describe the last book she read. But the why never gets answered clearly.

By the en A kind of novella that spends more time in your mind than on the page. Spark does it brilliantly by working under-the-hood. It is no spoiler that it is all about Lise executing her plan to kill herself. And so it is "it’s a whydunnit in q-sharp major and it has a message: never talk to the sort of girls that you wouldn’t leave lying about in your drawing-room for the servants to pick up." - the lines Lise used to describe the last book she read. But the why never gets answered clearly.

By the end, we get clear clues that she must have suffered some psychological problems. And mental illness can describe her problems and one can easily dismiss it at that, but from Shakespeare to Plath to Gogol to Grass to Han Kang, writers have long held habit of putting methods in madness. I will forward two theories, not mutually exclusive.

Suicides, especially those who have been planning to kill themselves for a long time, tend to be dramatic (think '13 reasons why'), knowing you are going to die soon, must mean that you want to leave some impact on the world. Is that why Lise works hard to leave a trail behind? Refuse to take unstainable dress so that her blood would show on her dress exciting 'pity and fear' (the last words of a novella)?

The second theory is that her eccentric actions arise out of a wish to avenge sexism she must have faced all her life. In the first chapter, there is the first reference to the 'glass ceiling' I have found in literature when Lise is described as having 'five girls under her and two men. Over her are two women and five men.'. The title itself points to a male-ruled world. She is a spinster, and her suddenly turning extremely girly - all point to a suppressed sexual instincts (at one point, she says it is the 'after the sex part' which bothers her.) This can be compared to the male character who tells her that a daily orgasm or two is necessary for digesting food. Lise seems to have decided to be in the driver's seat for a change. Throughout the novel, she seems to provoke men to believe to believe that they can expect favors from her only to deny them afterward. Again, she makes use of a man to kill herself too.
...more

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Aug 12, 2014 Blair rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, read-on-kindle, 1970s-release

The Driver's Seat is a weird, evasive story in which we are introduced to a chameleon-like protagonist named Lise. In an opening that is instantly unnerving, the first scene sees her raging at a shop assistant for daring to suggest she should buy a stain-proof dress - rather than seeing this as a positive, she loudly berates the girl for implying she would spill food on her clothes. Despite having led an ordered, somewhat mundane life - she's worked in the same office for sixteen years - Lise se ...more

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Aug 19, 2012 Diane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mysteries-thrillers

This book was not at all what I expected, but in the good way that shows you a surprising side of a writer. I had read Muriel Spark's "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," which I liked, so I wasn't anticipating something as dark and ominous as "The Driver's Seat" turned out to be.

It's the story of the last few days in the life of Lise, an unhappy career woman who takes a trip to Italy. She buys a garish dress and loudly tells everyone she meets that she has a date with her boyfriend. We learn early ...more

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Aug 19, 2015 Nicola rated it it was amazing

Ooft. That's how you write a fucking novella. ...more

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Oct 17, 2015 Alex rated it it was amazing

Shelves: top-100, 2015, novel-a-biography, noir, rth-lifetime

Lise doesn't make sense. She acts like a lunatic - not even a real lunatic, a lunatic's conception of a lunatic. All the way through the book, I thought: "Really? This is the plot? This seems very far-fetched." It seems like a story a lunatic would come up with. She gets herself into very dangerous situations with men - some would even say she's leading them on and then stealing their cars. She keeps mumbling about her imaginary boyfriend, whom she's looking for, who doesn't exist yet. "Will you Lise doesn't make sense. She acts like a lunatic - not even a real lunatic, a lunatic's conception of a lunatic. All the way through the book, I thought: "Really? This is the plot? This seems very far-fetched." It seems like a story a lunatic would come up with. She gets herself into very dangerous situations with men - some would even say she's leading them on and then stealing their cars. She keeps mumbling about her imaginary boyfriend, whom she's looking for, who doesn't exist yet. "Will you feel a presence? Is that how you’ll know?" says the old lady Lise takes shopping for no reason. and "Not really a presence," Lise says. "The lack of an absence." What is she talking about? Why did she plant her passport carefully in a cab? No one does that. If this is what's happening, it's not a very good book.

But I gave this five stars, because (view spoiler)

And then on a third level, also, we're talking about Flaubert and Tolstoy, right? There's this whole genre of men (view spoiler) Men writing women behaving badly - what men define as badly - who are punished by these same men, to teach a lesson. "Do not behave in this way that I insist you keep behaving in." That might be getting a little too "here's my postgrad thesis" about the whole thing, but it does work. ...more

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Mar 02, 2014 BrokenTune rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviewed

This review was first posted on BookLikes:
http://brokentune.booklikes.com/post/...

Also, before you read on, please note that this review contains SPOILERS!

What kind of person would go ballistic on finding out that the dress she was looking to buy is made of a fabric that does not stain?

Anyone? Anyone?

Nope, I don't know anyone to do something like this either but guessing from the way the story of The Driver's Seat develops, Lise is not like most people - Lise is having a breakdown.

I say I ...more

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Jun 06, 2011 Ben Loory rated it really liked it · review of another edition

muriel spark really intrigues me, almost enough to make me break my rule about not learning anything about writers i admire. there's an air about her writing which is almost evil, yet at the same time they seem profoundly moral. it would not surprise me to learn that she was a nun, or maybe killed forty people with an axe. or both. but, in any case, this book was a delight, and made my hair stand on end the whole time.

the other day i read a wikipedia article about judit polgar, the female chess ...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Ellie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2012-individual-challenge, british, fiction, disturbing, literary

I apparently read this book already: it has a review that sounds like I wrote it but I have no memory of reading it. I enjoyed it both times though.

Spark is a writer with a dark (almost vicious) sense of humor. She makes me laugh uncomfortably, feeling bad about myself for laughing while simultaneously feeling creeped out. This book is no exception; in fact, it may be the pinnacle of her kind of writing.

Lise is a somewhat (and maybe more) crazy office worker who is off for a holiday in some und ...more

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Nov 19, 2020 Paul Sánchez Keighley rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: c-united-kingdom, mysteries

A silly little book with a silly little premise. Having read The Prime of Miss Jean Brody and The Girls of Slender Means , I now approach a Spark book with cautious interest. Those are two deceptively intelligent books. As for this one, there is nothing particularly clever about it.

I cannot go into details because it is so short and shallow it is terribly easy to spoil. In essence, it is one of those books where you are first told how it is going to end and read on to find out how said co ...more

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Nov 24, 2008 Jessica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, novella, sparkdom

In this novel (novella, really, or very long short story) published in 1970, Spark turns traditional gender relations on their head. As the buoyant, frenetic Lise, dressed in clashing colors, goes on holiday in Genoa on the hunt for "her type," she meets the elderly Mrs. Fiedke. The two team up for a shopping spree (slippers for Mrs F's nephew; a food mixer, among other things, for Lise):

"They are demanding equal rights with us," says Mrs. Fiedke. "That's why I never vote with the Liberals. Perf ...more

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Reading 1001: The Driver's Seat, by Muriel Spark	2	17	Oct 30, 2018 11:45AM
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About Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark

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Dame Muriel Spark DBE was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot ...more

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Quotes from The Driver's Seat

“I never trust the airlines from those countries where the pilots believe in the afterlife. You are safer when they don't.” — 20 likes

“It's a whydunnit in q-sharp major and it has a message: never talk to the sort of girls that you wouldn't leave lying about in your drawing-room for the servants to pick up.” — 12 likes

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