A review by nohoperadio
The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark

2.5

Interestingly I didn’t like this very much, though I suspect that with time, as the memory of the actual experience of reading it erodes down into a rough idea of the book’s general concept, I’ll mistakenly start to think I liked it more than I in fact did.

I remember The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie as a short story’s worth of material worked into a novella by presenting the same few scenes over again at different angles, to brilliant aesthetic effect. This feels like a short story’s worth of material worked into a novella by adding a bunch of inessential tedious stuff. I liked the main character when she was introduced in the first pages, she’s basically a huge offputting freak who gets her characterization largely via how other people respond to her, but then she spends most of the book in a foreign country where she has a good enough excuse to be an outsider that it isn’t as entertaining anymore.

Muriel Spark has built up enough good will by writing Jean Brodie that I’m not giving up on her yet. And I do think even this could be a great story without having to change much other than throwing out most of it.