Reading Matters

'The Driver's Seat' by Muriel Spark

 

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Modern Classics; 128 pages; 2006.

Oooh, my goodness, the late Muriel Spark did a fine line in totally batty, off-the-wall characters, didn't she? In this novella, first published in 1970 (and recently long-listed for the the Lost Man Booker Prize), she introduces us to the 30-something Lise, who escapes her boring office job for a holiday to "the South". Except this is no ordinary holiday -- and Lise is no ordinary office worker.

From the outset she behaves in inexplicable ways. When she throws a complete strop in a clothes shop for what seems like a very odd reason indeed -- she didn't like knowing that the dress she wanted to buy was made from stain-resistant material -- the reader immediately wonders whether Lise is highly strung or simply a bit weird. When she returns to the office and begins to laugh hysterically and then starts "crying all in a flood" you think maybe she's just hormonal.

But later, when she eventually buys the outfit she wants to take away with her, a garishly designed dress comprising "a lemon-yellow top with a skirt patterned in bright V's of orange, mauve and blue" and a clashing summer coat featuring narrow stripes of red and white, with a white collar, you realise she's just completely barmy. This opinion is cemented when Lise tells the disbelieving sales assistant that:

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.

Oh yes, Lise is a nutter. And you just know her trip to the Continent is going to be filled with one narrow escapade after another.

And this is where I break one of my reviewing rules and reveal a plot spoiler, so if you don't wish to know what happens next, can I suggest you skip ahead to the very last paragraph.

Just when you are looking forward to finding out how the supposedly well-travelled Lise is going to negotiate a foreign culture wearing such a hideous combination of clothes, Spark introduces a curve-ball. You are only on page 25 and Lise hasn't even got on the plane, when you find out that she will be murdered:

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.

Right-o. So, immediately, the tension gets ratcheted up a few notches because you want to know how Lise meets her sorry demise. And so you follow her shenanigans with a weird mix of fear and fascination, because even though she's a screwball character you don't want her to die.

And that, I suppose, is the magic of this wonderful book. It's only 107 pages long and easily read in one sitting, but it is such a masterpiece of plotting and suspense that you wonder how Spark achieved it in so few a words. Everything is pared down to the bare minimum without losing that sense of excitement and sheer horror as Lise bumbles her way through the streets of an unnamed European city.

The Driver's Seat is terribly dark fodder, but I loved every moment. I don't think it will win the Lost Booker, if only because it's so short and is over before you've even begun it, but it's definitely a book that demands a second or third reading to see if you can discover exactly how Lise plotted her journey of self-destruction.

'A Far Cry From Kensington' by Muriel Spark

Fiction - hardcover; Virago Modern Classics; 208 pages; 2008.

The late Muriel Spark is one of those writers whose back catalogue is so long and eclectic it's almost impossible to know where to start. I read Aiding and Abetting last year, because I was intrigued by the real life disappearance of Lord Lucan upon which the novel is based. Having seen KevinfromCanada's glowing review of A Far Cry From Kensington last month I decided this novel, first published in 1988, was the next to try.

I treated myself to a lovely Virago Modern Classics edition, featuring an introduction by Ali Smith, and found myself reading the entire book in just two longish sittings. To say I was utterly charmed by it would probably be an understatement. This is a deliciously enjoyable story that is so perfectly constructed it's almost impossible to find fault with it -- on any level. The prose is simple, the characters believable and the plot expertly drawn, so that you're never quite sure where it's going to take you and then feel overwhelmingly satisfied when you arrive at its destination.

The story is narrated by Mrs Hawkins, a war widow, looking back on her life in London some 30 years earlier when, in 1954, she lived in a South Kensington rooming house and worked in publishing. She was only 28 at the time but had a matronly air about her.

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. It was, of course, partly this physical factor that disposed people to confide in me. I looked comfortable.

Even her boss, Martin York, of the struggling publishing firm Ullswater Press, confides in her, inviting her to his office for a minute ("A minute meant an hour, sometimes more"), where he would stand at his window, or sit in his leather armchair, and regale her with his thoughts. (Despite his confiding tone, he never reveals that he's carrying out fraudulent activities for which he's later arrested and imprisoned for seven years.)

But her forthright manner and her maxim that "no life can be carried on satisfactorily unless people are honest" lands her in hot water. When a purple-prosed would-be writer, Hector Bartlett, starts stalking her in order to get his work published by Ullswater Press, she tells him in no uncertain terms that he is a pisseur de copie, a French phrase for a hack writer who urinates copy. Unfortunately, for Mrs Hawkins, Mr Bartlett is having an affair with a well regarded author, Emma Loy, who has a lot of powerful sway in the book industry. You can guess what happens. Mrs Hawkins not only loses her job, her candid admission (and Mr Bartlett) follows her wherever she goes, and comes back to haunt her in more ways than one...

Meanwhile, back at the rooming house, one of the tenants, Wanda, an immigrant Polish dressmaker, receives a poison pen letter accusing her of "not declaring your income to the Authorities". Wanda almost has a nervous breakdown over this, because she's petrified of being deported back to her homeland. This is where the ever-dependable Mrs Hawkins steps in to do a bit of detective sleuthing to see who might write such a nasty letter. Her efforts come to nothing. It's only when the letter writer phones Wanda to warn her off, that things take a sinister turn for the worse and Mrs Hawkins finds herself being accused of the very crime she's trying to investigate.

So what A Far Cry From Kensington delivers is a two-pronged narrative, one that focuses on the book publishing industry in 1954 and Mrs Hawkins' career as an editor (this makes fascinating reading in itself), and another that focuses on a sinister campaign to frighten a lodger out of her wits, but to what end?

What makes this novel work so wonderfully is, of course, the detail that brings the book trade and post-war London to life. But it's also the sparkling wit (I laughed out loud several times), the delicious characters (Hector Bartlett, for instance, seems as frightful as his prose) and the seamless weaving of two different narratives that are expertly drawn together right at the very end to deliver a really satisfying conclusion.

'Aiding and Abetting' by Muriel Spark

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 212 pages; 2000. 

Truth is often stranger than fiction, and no more so than in the case of Lord Lucan, an English aristocrat, who has been missing since the night of November 7, 1974. On this night the nanny looking after Lucan's three children was brutally murdered and his wife suffered severe head wounds in the attack. Lucan, who had a gambling problem and had racked up considerable debts, was suspected of the crime. Wanted on charges of murder and attempted murder, he was never brought to court, and despite being declared officially dead in 1999, numerous "sightings" of him still occur around the world.

The late Muriel Spark, one of Britain's most acclaimed and prolific writers, takes this real life story, one that has fascinated generations of Brits, and turns it on its head. She has Lucan still alive, on the run from the law but supported by a closeted network of aristocratic friends. When he presents himself for treatment at the consulting rooms of a Paris-based psychiatrist, Dr Hildegard Wolf is immediately intrigued -- and not just because of Lucan's mysterious past. It turns out she is already treating another man, who also claims to be Lord Lucan. And so she must try to unravel which Lucan -- if any -- is the real seventh Earl, and then she must determine what threat each poses to her new life, far from the one in which she was a fake stigmatic defrauding people of money for her own gain.

What follows is a fun, high-tension, hilarious romp that spans Paris, London and the Highlands of Scotland as Lucan and Dr Wolf both go on the run. Without wishing to give too much of the remaining plot away, I can safely say the ending is a satisfyingly wicked one.

Aiding and Abetting is, quite simply, a delight from start to finish. Its pared down, elegant prose and fast-moving storyline makes it a deliciously quick read. But because it strays into areas of morality and crime there's enough substance to give real food for thought. It might appear to be a rather simple novel but don't let that trick you into thinking it doesn't deal with rather complex issues...

If you like this book, you might also like The Butterfly Man by Heather Rose, which has Lord Lucan reinvent himself as a Scottish expat living in Tasmania.

You can find out more about the real life Lord Lucan story on the Channel 4 website.