Muriel Spark

Lise leaves her home in northern Europe for a holiday, but it is not rest and relaxation that she is looking for...

The Driver's Seat

Shortlisted for The Lost Man Booker Prize 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.

A murder or a suicide? I can hardly tell.

gitsa

I think I need to leave this unrated for now while I stew on it and/or read it again. I think I liked it?

Grace M

Regan Martin

I read this twice. It’s insane. Insane to the point that I have nothing else to say about it. No, you know what? I do have something else to say. I wonder if this book inspired Sally Rooney’s narration style in Beautiful World. And I mean it’s admirable to try to emulate anything at all about this book. But there’s just no way it can be done

Margo Koss

Lise leaves her home in northern Europe for a holiday, but it is not rest and relaxation that she is looking for.

Shreya Punj

This book is so dark and terrifying. With each passing sentence I felt my sense of foreboding turn into just boding. 

Muriel Sparks is brilliant!

Christopher McCaffery

Mary Baldwin

This is a wonderful book, but will probably be far from what you're expecting. I'm not going to write one of those deeply literary perfect essays that seem to constitute many other reviews of this book, that won't tell you anything other Han how smart and 'well read' I think I am (!).

My first recommendation, the book is short, read it from start to finish. You'd lose so much of the poetry and ambience if you broke off half way.

Lise is extremely unlikeable, I fell out with her somewhere on page three. But you don't need to like her to enjoy the book.

I say book, not story, because it isn't a typical story. The authors describes why events happen, not how. As the 'story' progresses the sense of unease builds and you feel the sense of losing control, small details become suspicions and Lise ever more predictable.

I'll read it a second time for sure.

Gary Homewood

Starts out as a late 60s satire of a slightly eccentric female protagonist quitting her slightly dull job and travelling to Europe in a garish outfit. Gets madder and increasingly unhinged, ends up in a genuinely disturbing and very dark place. Short, gripping and subversive.

The Driver's Seat

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