I enjoyed this book. It was a bit different from all the other stories I've read by Muriel Spark, darker and more morbid than what I am used to from her. In this story a woman takes a vacation from work and makes all sorts of bizarre preparations as she is leaving, pissing off people along the way and acting so odd that no one can quite figure her out. She's on a mission, and has her victim in her sights, even though she does not seem to know what he even looks like. The ending is rather clever, I thought, and the story reminded me a bit of the sorts of twists Stephen King writes. ( )

I think this has immediately become one of my favourite books. Actually perfect.

Intense, compact study of an unbalanced 34-year-old woman who will wind up murdered, as laid out at the beginning. A relentless death spiral, likened to The Blind Owl and The Turn of the Screw. Spark's pick of all her books. ( )

A rather startling tiny, dark book - a novella, i guess. Read quickly as i wanted to find out what was going on! Uptight-ish lady (maybe that's not fair... but who knows) leaves a northern european city to vacation in italy (i guess?). She is on a quest to find her man. She wears outlandish clothes and says and does unusual things throughout the story. Hmmm.. how much to say- this is an interesting book!!! She is twice semi-attacked by ravenous men and both times she manages to escape and steal their car (not bad!) though she is pretty easy with the whole milieu- no matter what happens. As it turns out, we had thought she was looking for her man for a romantic liaison (at least i thought that) but it turns we (well, ...i) was all wrong! It was something else altogether! Pretty amazing book. ( )

The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark is a short novel about a woman who leaves behind her dull office job in London and heads to a warm country on vacation. She appears to be searching for a man, but has great difficulty finding a man that is “her type”. The story is rather strange and this reader had some difficulty in pinning down the main character’s motivation, but looking back upon the pages, I can see that clues were scattered throughout the book.

Although written in a light, almost tongue-in-cheek manner, this is a dark story about a woman who is clearly not quite right in the head. She spends her first day on vacation by picking up an eccentric old lady and wandering the town, looking for her type of man. She is not very likeable, and can be very annoying but the author is so skilled that the story works and the reader becomes involved.

Muriel Spark has written a book where it is impossible to empathize with the main character, in fact, her over-the-top actions made this reader rather uncomfortable. Yet this uncomfortable, awkward novel is so well written that you find yourself immediately engaged by this inventive and unusual story. ( )