Muriel Spark

[StillILearn]

I'm reading Aiding and Abetting, by Muriel Spark. It's the weirdest thing, but the book is making me think about the OJ Simpson case. The similarity I see is that nobody wanted to believe that he did it until after it was too late.

Here are a couple of links:

Aiding and Abetting

Muriel Spark is a sneaky old lady. There I was, going through Aiding and Abetting and thinking to myself, Oh dear, the old girl's a bit past it -- when all the time she'd been having me on. Leading me up the garden path.

The book, I thought, was turning out a bit dull and old-fashioned. And not terribly well focused. But then she suddenly ups and hits you with a few surprises. It's an experience rather like asking an awfully respectable old lady if she needs any help in crossing the road, only to be told **** off, sunshine, I can manage very well.

Lord Lucan

 

[Stewart]

I quite liked Muriel Spark's Loitering With Intent when I read it earlier this year although I don't recall much of it other than the basic premise. I decided, this morning, to put Kiran Desai's The Inheritance Of Loss aside for a day and get through Spark's The Driver's Seat and, halfway through, I have my suspicions about what is going to happen but, as seems to be a trait of Spark's, she has probably led me to have those suspicions so that she can surprise me when I'm wrong.

 

[StillILearn]

I finished AaA last night and found it to be oddly diverting and amusing. I almost wrote "pleasantly diverting" but that seemed the wrong word to use since the book is based on a real-life murder. I guess the fact that it happened thirty years ago makes it seem a bit unreal to me (although that shouldn't be either, I guess, since the family and friends are still living, and possibly Lord Lucan, too) but in this book Spark manages to gives the whole episode an outlandish and even humorous twist or three. Or maybe I've fallen prey to what seems to be a pervasive refusal to take this brutal murder seriously.

Previously the only work of this writer I was familar with was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but I think I'll go ahead and put some of her others on my TBR list. Let us know how you liked The Driver's Seat, Stewart.

 

[Shade]

Stewart, I don't think you will be surprised by the ending of The Driver's Seat.

StillILearn, I've read around half of Spark's novels and I think her best period is the early 1960s. Among her best in my view, along with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, would be Memento Mori, The Girls of Slender Means, The Public Image, Not to Disturb, The Bachelors and The Ballad of Peckham Rye. Overall I find her books fascinating but oddly frustrating. There's a deliberate coldness that seems almost calculated to alienate the reader, and she's so spare with words (some of her books are under 100 pages long) that it's often hard to follow precisely her point as she never explains anything.

Her short stories are superb also.

 

[Stewart]

Stewart, I don't think you will be surprised by the ending of The Driver's Seat.

And you were right.

It was an average book, I think. I think I share Shade's opinion that she's "fascinating but oddly frustrating". With The Driver's Seat I thought the pace was great, the happenings rather fun, but as to the actual premise of the novel, I couldn't have cared less who was in the driver's seat (be it, as the introduction suggests, the main character, Spark, God, or some other party) as long as I reached my destination.

I'm trying not to give anything about the novel (surely novella is more appropriate?) as it's interesting to watch the characters and the main character's breadcrumbing before the denouement.

 

[Stewart]

Stewart, I don't think you will be surprised by the ending of The Driver's Seat.

And you were right.

It was an average book, I think. I think I share Shade's opinion that she's "fascinating but oddly frustrating". With The Driver's Seat I thought the pace was great, the happenings rather fun, but as to the actual premise of the novel, I couldn't have cared less who was in the driver's seat (be it, as the introduction suggests, the main character, Spark, God, or some other party) as long as I reached my destination. I also wonder whether it would have been better if I'd seen the sixties first hand; it would certainly be better for to understand the new found freedoms of the age. Things I, as an eighties child, have always taken for granted.

I'm trying not to give anything about the novel (surely novella is more appropriate?) as it's interesting to watch the characters and the main character's breadcrumbing before the denouement.

 

[PimpinAintEasy]

Hey Stewart, what did you think THE DRIVERS SEAT was about? Why was Liz acting so weird? Was she just an unremarkable person who was desperate to draw attention to herself? If so, what was Spark trying to tell us? Would love to know your opinions.