April 21, 2005
The Driver's Seat
The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
Lise is going on a trip. She's going on a holiday. You don't know where, you don't know why, and you don't know who she's going to meet.
What you do know is that in less than 24 hours, she'll be dead.
The Driver's Seat reads like a reverse 'whodunnit'. The trick is that you already know what happens, you just need to find out how (and why).
The book begins at what you'd think is the beginning...but no. The beginning of the story is Lise's death...the book begins by going back in time to the 2 days before she dies.
Intrigued? You should be.
You can expect this book to be blunt, and precise.
But don't expect this book to be a Dan Brown-chock-full-of-description-thriller.
Spark writes very sparingly, using details at intervals that she believes fit into the story. Any additional description is left out.
The result is that you're at the end still wondering about this or that.
The other side of it is that you'll finish this book in about an hour. It's quite thin.
Read it. Then read it again. The pieces of the puzzle that you think you had figured out will meld together in a different way the second time through.
