THE DRIVERS SEAT PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Muriel Spark,John Lanchester | 128 pages | 28 May 2010 | Penguin Books Ltd | 9780141188348 | English | London, United Kingdom The Driver's Seat SE Federal Hwy, Stuart, FL - Foreshadowing is a consistent tool to drive the story forwards. Another of tomorrow's witnesses. She has to guide him through the whole last act, taking a lead, the driver's seat. Curtain and standing ovations! Reluctant comparison: This wonderfully strange, scary, disturbingly perfect tragedy- novella has some evident similarities to the annoying plot of London Fields , featuring a murderee determined to get murdered in the last act, using her manipulative charm and sense of chameleonic change of appearance to summon murderer candidates and to check their suitability for the task. The femme fatale Nicola plays her surroundings just like Lise, however with less charm and grace, and in an everlasting dull repetition over pages. After reading The Driver's Seat, I know the plot as such works beautifully - a determined murderee, looking for the murderer, is an exciting thought experiment, but I can't believe Amis got away with that lengthy rip-off without punishment. He stole the story and put a lot of testosterone into the mix. If Lise is a skilled professional murderee, Nicola is a cheap copy cat. Keith, however, and Marmaduke make up for it a bit, giving London Fields two comical characters where there is only one in The Driver's Seat, the deeply religious Jehova's Witness Mrs Fiedke, whose take on reality reads as follows: "No flying from Barcelona, I said. I'm a strict believer, but I never trust the airlines from those countries where the pilots believe in the afterlife. You are safer when they don't. I've been told the Scandinavian airlines are fairly reliable in that respect. The murderee is dead, long live the murderee! And Nicola: I don't blame you for copying Lise, who wouldn't feel tempted? Unfortunately you didn't choose your narrator as wisely as she did, so you got stuck in the middle. Update a week later: I honestly thought I was exaggerating the "Swedish decoration in pastel colours" angle of this book, written such a long time ago. I thought it was satire, until I opened my free weekend newspaper and read an article that made me think Muriel Spark was a master of foreshadowing things she didn't even know existed: Saturday, 17th September , a reportage about a Swedish author of crime fiction, of course and her sense of home styling in bright colours. And since the spines all vary slightly in colour, it makes a harmonious impression. This is true. Not satire. I apologise for thinking I was being funny when I wrote about that lady from Stockholm in the bookstore last week. I underestimated the situation significantly! View all 25 comments. My first Muriel Spark. Hmm, well, hmm… Not sure however how I feel with this short novel at all. 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 My first Muriel Spark. 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 or novellas, and if I had to term the genre I would opt for black comedy here. Because despite the whole tragic content and whodunnity background it is a comedy. At least for me but we established already I have somewhat odd sense of humour. The main protagonist Lise is definitely mentally disturbed. All people she has misfortune to meet on her way are more or less not right in the head either. A bit senile old lady met at the hotel and who accompanies Lise through day in shopping center, the guy from car workshop who offers to drive Lise and by the way trying to take advantage of the opportunity or the cranky dude fixated on healthy food and lifestyle who is allowed to at least one orgasm per day and, yes, you got this right, attempts use Lise for that. We can read these particular words he's not my type for several times because for her purpose Lise needs someone else, someone special. In fact she recognized him from the start like probably he guessed something about her behaviour too. Lise remained a mystery to me but the whole story despite its cruelty and brutality had quite surreal air. And, for starters, I think it's enough to make me read more of Spark. May 31, 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. 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! 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. 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. View all 21 comments. Sep 15, Gaurav rated it really liked it. Spark constructed her world with intelligence, relish and extraordinary precision of a surgeon. 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. Could it be one of the ancillary characters of the book, who might have forced Lise to do what she eventually does? The world of Spark is hugely imaginative and perfectly resonates with T. 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. Highly recommended 4. 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. View all 26 comments. Aug 02, 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.