Muriel Spark - The Driver's Seat

Oh, for such a small novella (tautology?), The Driver's Seat covers so much, with a dark plot, completely mental characters and just bizarreness all around! Lise, a thirty-something year old woman, is stuck in a dull office job for a decade or so, and she's about to embark on her first vacation. At the very outset, we discover that Lise is completely and utterly nuts. Like flips out in a shop, while looking for a dress to travel in, when the salesperson tells her it's made from stain-resistant material... so much so that she walks out of the store, as she is affronted by the insinuation that she does not eat properly. When she finally finds an outfit to wear ("a lemon-yellow top with a skirt patterned in bright V's of orange, mauve and blue.' and a coat over the top 'narrow stripes, red and white with a white collar") during her travels, the reader is left truly bewildered, by the sheer garishness of it, which she justifies easily.

The colours go together perfectly. People here in the North are ignorant of colours. Conservative; old-fashioned. If only you knew! These colours are a natural blend for me. Absolutely natural.

Okay, so possibly, Lise is on the verge of a breakdown of sorts, but she does seem to have an agenda. She insists she's meeting her boyfriend at the destination, but one wonders if she knows the man in question, for she does incessantly use the phrase, he's not my type while interacting with any of the strange men she encounters from the start of her break till... well... her death. Again, early on, Spark lets us know about the fate of her character. Not the who, not the why, just the what.

She will be found tomorrow morning dead from multiple stab-wounds, her wrists bound with a silk scarf and her ankles bound with a man’s necktie, in the grounds of an empty villa, in a park of the foreign city to which she is travelling on the flight now boarding at Gate 14.

Lise's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic as the novella progresses. She lies glibly, steals a car, and just seems to have lost all regard for any semblance of normality. Everything as per her convenience. Everything on her terms. Bizarre, uncomfortable, gripping.

This is the third book by Muriel Spark that I have read, and it couldn't be more different than the other two. It's significantly darker, to begin with, and suspenseful. The characters are just - wow - I really hope I never have to interact with people like them! Honestly! And despite it being a mere hundred-odd pages, Spark covers a lot of ground, and the ending just fits perfectly. Almost as though everything makes perfect sense.

Muriel Spark - Loitering With Intent

There's a thin line between reality and fiction; they oft' reflect each other very closely, so much so that the line is indiscernible. But - what happens when reality starts imitating fiction? That's the basic premise of Spark's 1981 novel, starring Fleur Talbot: an aspiring writer in London in the 1950s. She's writing her first novel, Warrender Chase, but she needs a job to get by while she finishes it. And so, she takes up the position of the secretary to Sir Quentin Oliver, and his brainchild: The Autobiographical Association.

The Autobiographical Association comprises of a bunch of people who write their memoirs, which are to be published in the future, when anyone and everyone mentioned in the autobiographies are dead. In a manner of speaking, it's almost like a time capsule.

A myriad of entertaining characters are created by Spark, to fill in the roles of the members of the Association - each more warped than the other. Fleur, the narrator, ends up "enriching" their otherwise mundane autobiographies. However, right before her eyes, the scenes from the office start resembling her novel - which she had started before taking the job! What's is Sir Quentin's end goal? And to what lengths is he ready to go to in order to achieve his end goal?

In Fleur, we have a witty likeable narrator, who says it as she sees it.

I always desired books; nearly all of my bills were for books. I possessed one very rare book which I traded for part of my bill with another bookshop, for I wasn’t a bibliophile of any kind; rare books didn’t interest me for their rarity but their content. I borrowed frequently from the public library, but often I would go into a bookshop and in my longing to possess, let us say, the Collected Poems of Arthur Clough and a new Collected Chaucer, I would get into conversation with the bookseller and run up another bill.

She befriends Sir Quentin's mother, Lady Edwina, who is an eccentric character, with a mischievous side. And then there's the despicable Beryl Tims - the apparent love interest of Sir Quentin - who works with him, and finally, Sir Quentin himself - a character who's extremely unlikeable and becomes a shade more repulsive with each turn of the page. It's these characters that carry this work of metafiction, and makes it a fascinating read.

I think I didn't get enough out of the book, by virtue of not knowing much about a couple of authors (Benvenuto Cellini and John Henry Newman) whose works Fleur (and a couple of other characters) refers to at regular intervals (quoting passages as well), setting them as model autobiographies.

I also thought Warrender Chase sounded like a pretty dreadful book (not one I'd like to read, anyway). Maybe in a parallel universe, where novels are actually a byproduct of reality, this book exists, and the "lucid readers" are singing a different tune. If not that, maybe it has a "cult" following. What do I know?

Muriel Spark - A Far Cry From Kensington

Sometimes, I wonder about myself. Half way through this Fantastic February Female Frivolities (I like alliterations, love double alliterations...), I realised I hadn't picked out a single Virago Modern Classic. Like I said, sometimes, I do wonder about myself. Anyway, the minute this hit me, I reached out for the first VMC I could find on my shelf, and here you have it: Muriel Spark's A Far Cry From Kensington. I haven't read anything by Muriel Spark before, and to be honest, I've always been kind-of intimidated by her works. I wasn't quite sure as to what to expect with A Far Cry From Kensington, but I definitely didn't expect it to be such an easy read - easy enough to finish in just one sitting!

Narrated by Mrs. Hawkins, a war widow, A Far Cry From Kensington is her reflections on a post-War London when she stayed in a "rooming house" in South Kensington, and worked in publishing houses in the early 1950s. Mrs. Hawkins is a likeable narrator - she doesn't hesitate to call a spade a spade, and there's no beating around the bush. Even when she talks about herself, she's direct, honest, and slightly hyperbolic - always good attributes in a story-teller.

There was something about me, Mrs Hawkins, that invited confidences. I was abundantly aware of it, and indeed abundance was the impression I gave. I was massive in size, strong-muscled, huge-bosomed, with wide hips, hefty long legs, a bulging belly and fat backside; I carried an ample weight with my five-foot-six of height, and was healthy with it.

One of the unwritten items on the job spec at a publishers is being diplomatic. While Mrs. Hawkins was well-liked and respected by everyone around her (even her boss confided in her), diplomacy wasn't her strongest asset. On calling an aspiring author, Hector Bartlett, pisseur de copie (a urinator of 'frightful prose') to his face, she finds herself in hot water - the author had a strong relationship with a famous influential authoress, Emma Loy, and she was looking out for him. Inevitably, Mrs. Hawkins lost her job, but the two authors (one famous, the other still unpublished) continued to plague her career, as she herself refused to withdraw the remark.

The secondary thread of the novel revolves around the other inhabitants in the housing, and how they bond together. Wanda, the Polish dressmaker receives an anonymous letter, which threatens to expose her to Inland Revenue for not paying her taxes, and the poor woman is convinced that she will be deported. Mrs. Hawkins (and the other residents) try to sleuth around, eliminating all possible suspects one by one... and then the episode slips to the back of their minds, until Wanda receives an intimidating phone call. The cycle repeats.

The book represents the post-War London, where people from different backgrounds are still affected by the horror of war, but, they're taking on the challenges to make a new life, almost optimistically. Throw in some extortion (fraudulence), some homosexuality, a budding love, humour, wit and even radionics (!), and you've got yourself an absorbing fascinating story, with vivid realistic characters - some awful, some immense. For instance, Hector Bartlett really is a pisseur de copie, but, by the time the book comes to a close, that's not the only phrase you'll use to describe him!

Oh, and let me repeat a small part of the opening paragraph of the book, for it drew me in immediately, and I felt compelled to keep flipping the pages. Even when I flipped to the last page, I almost felt as though I should go back and start from page one.

Can you decide to think? - Yes, you can. You can put your mind to anything most of the time. You can sit peacefully in front of a blank television set, just watching nothing; and sooner or later you can make your own programme much better than the mass product. It's fun, you should try it. You can put anyone you like on the screen, one or in company, saying and doing what you want them to do, with yourself in the middle if you prefer it that way.

Have you read any Muriel Spark? Do you have any recommendations as to what I should read next?