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Product Description
Lise has been driven to distraction by working in the same accountants' office for sixteen years. So she 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 the obsessional experience takes on a far darker significance as she heads on a journey of self-destruction. Infinity and eternity attend Lise's last terrible day in an unnamed southern city, as she meets her fate.
About the Author
Muriel Spark (born February 1, 1918) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. She began writing seriously after the war, beginning with poetry and literary criticism. In 1947, she became editor of the Poetry Review. Her first novel The Comforters was published in 1957, but it was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1962) which established her reputation. After living in New York for some years, she settled in Italy in the late 1960s. She became Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1993.
John Lanchester was born in Hamburg in 1962. His first novel, THE DEBT TO PLEASURE, published by Picador in 1996, won the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Betty Trask Prize and the Hawthornden Prize. His second novel, MR PHILLIPS (Faber), was published in 2000 and was hailed as a "postmodern Ulysses". FRAGRANT HARBOUR, his third novel, was published by Faber in 2002. His work has been translated into 21 languages.
John Lanchester has recently delivered a memoir, FAMILY ROMANCE, which will be published by Faber in the spring of 2007.
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First Sentence
'And the material doesn't stain,' the salesgirl says. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
'And the material doesn't stain,' the salesgirl says. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Spark is, of course, best-known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but this book was, apparently, one of the author's own favourites.
Disturbing, funny, and acutely observed, this short novel (perhaps even short enough to be called a novella) follows the movements of a woman who has gone over the edge.
Spark's own life and background is worth scanning, if even briefly, before reading this - there can be few authors whose powers of observation and telling detail are applied to portraits of characters who we'd probably prefer not to scrutinise too closely.
A truly original story, with a small cast of memorable characters and a lingering afterburn reminiscent of the best ever produced by Du Maurier.
Highly recommended.
Disturbing, funny, and acutely observed, this short novel (perhaps even short enough to be called a novella) follows the movements of a woman who has gone over the edge.
Spark's own life and background is worth scanning, if even briefly, before reading this - there can be few authors whose powers of observation and telling detail are applied to portraits of characters who we'd probably prefer not to scrutinise too closely.
A truly original story, with a small cast of memorable characters and a lingering afterburn reminiscent of the best ever produced by Du Maurier.
Highly recommended.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Amazingly concise yet fluid writing. Probably one of Spark's finest works yet somehow overlooked. If you want to know how to write a crisp, well-plotted novella this is one of the best examples out there. The plot twists make the story - I must admit I thought I saw one coming but there is no audience cheat here. The suspense just keeps on building. I won't give away plot points. No spoilers here. Just read it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Though known better for her subtly subversive, insightful and often tragic novels, such as 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' and 'The Girl's of Slender Means', Muriel Spark's 'The Driver's Seat' is perhaps her most innovative, and definitely her most provoking novel. The short, staccato novel tells the tale of Lise, an office worker, stifled by her mundane and uniform existence, who goes abroad in an attempt to find 'the one' in the form of a man. Spark's cruel, and quickly apparent twist, appears to be that 'the one' will be a man whom she wants to invoke some form of sexual crime or severe sexual deviancy upon her, whilst she is forced to subjugate to him, and this realisation gives the novel a sense of horror from the very early stages. Set around a vapid, soulless expanse of shopping malls, traffic jams and faceless hotels, Spark's novel gives a very powerful evocation of the sense of an absence of humanity and connectedness in the mid-late 20th century of her writing.
In Lise, Spark has a heroine who is a sort of diametric opposite of characters such as Jean Brodie. Terse, antagonistic and clearly in the throes of mental dissipation; the outlandishly dressed Lise forces the novel to unravel in a purposefully hectic style, as Lise appears to become more convinced of her plans, and equally further away from her sanity. Hugely troubling and genuinely startling, even for the contemporary reader; the only thing the novel falls down on is Spark's purposeful but sometimes maddeningly repetitive implications of what is wrong with this modern world in which Lise exists. Equally, though the technique of making the reader feel a sense of alienation by making Lise so other, and not giving her the qualities with which one would traditionally empathise, makes the novel especially hard to connect with, as superbly written as most of it is. For those looking for a gripping and challenging look at the human condition on the brink of itself, this is a superb work; but one that most readers aren't going to find themselves altogether enjoying the experience of.
In Lise, Spark has a heroine who is a sort of diametric opposite of characters such as Jean Brodie. Terse, antagonistic and clearly in the throes of mental dissipation; the outlandishly dressed Lise forces the novel to unravel in a purposefully hectic style, as Lise appears to become more convinced of her plans, and equally further away from her sanity. Hugely troubling and genuinely startling, even for the contemporary reader; the only thing the novel falls down on is Spark's purposeful but sometimes maddeningly repetitive implications of what is wrong with this modern world in which Lise exists. Equally, though the technique of making the reader feel a sense of alienation by making Lise so other, and not giving her the qualities with which one would traditionally empathise, makes the novel especially hard to connect with, as superbly written as most of it is. For those looking for a gripping and challenging look at the human condition on the brink of itself, this is a superb work; but one that most readers aren't going to find themselves altogether enjoying the experience of.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Poor, contrived, rubbish
I am a big fan of Muriel Spark's writing, so I read this book with high hopes.
What I got was a contrived, unbelievable main character saddled with awful dialogue and... Read more
What I got was a contrived, unbelievable main character saddled with awful dialogue and... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Md Lachlan
Driven To Disaster (The Main Character, Not The Book)
As the minimal 109 page novel `The Driver's Seat' by Muriel Spark opened I knew that with the main character Lise I, as the reader, was in for quite an unusual treat, mind you... Read more
Published on 7 Feb 2010 by Simon Savidge Reads
The Driver's Seat
This is a realy interesting book which makes you question what you expect from reading and why. All the obvious pattern are absent in this novella which left me feeling lost and... Read more
Published on 20 Sep 2004
Mind Blowing
Lise is bored of her mundane life and decides to go on holiday but in search of what? Ths piece follows the story line of a classic murder story with a seriously twisted end. Read more
Published on 4 Jan 2001
Mind Blowing
Lise is bored of her mundane life and decides to go on holiday but in search of what? Ths piece follows the story line of a classic murder story with a seriously twisted end. Read more
Published on 4 Jan 2001
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