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| checking out some books in the library |
But somehow without meaning to, I’ve ended up reading a few books that I would definitely categorize into genres, like today’s title The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark.
I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to read anything by Ms. Spark, so this was my introduction to her work…and what an introduction it was.
Nothing seems quite sane in the world of our protagonist Lise. She comes from a Northern European country – Denmark – and has decided, or rather has been pretty much forced, to take a vacation in the warmer climes of Italy.
We’re introduced to her as she goes shopping for a travel outfit and completely and utterly overreacts to something a salesperson says to her about a stainfree fabric. We start to get an inkling that not all is well in the mind of Lise. She keeps on talking about going to meet her boyfriend on holiday, but no such boyfriend exists. She means to approach someone and see if they’ll ‘fit’.
But at some point, I start to wonder if everyone she meets is a bit mad as well, as they end up saying the oddest things:
“I’m from Johannesburg,’ says the woman, ‘and I have this house in Jo’burg and another at Sea Point on the Cape. Then my son, he’s a lawyer, he has a flat in Jo’burg. In all our places we have spare bedrooms, that makes two green, two pink, three beige, and I’m trying to pick up books to match. I don’t see any with just those pastel tints.” pp. 22
I know that sometimes interior decorators will buy books by the foot from bookshops for the less literary of their clients, to give them some intellectual cache. But a woman picking out a book at an airport bookshop to match her spare bedroom? It strained credulity.
Lise then encounters not one, not two, but three odd men in the airplane she’s flying in. One of whom changes seats during takeoff just so he doesn’t have to sit next to her and another who pesters her about his macrobiotic diet and yin and yang and who basically wants to sleep with her asap.
She manages to elude the ‘hippy’ pest once she’s landed, promising to meet him later just so she can get away from him. After a strange exchange in her hotel, she ends up going for some food and shopping with an elderly lady staying at the same hotel.
They then talk at each other without one really ever answering the other, but seemingly having two different monologues at once. Lise seems to like Mrs. Fiedke’s company but when she spots that she’s become unwell while in a bathroom stall at a department store they’ve wandered into, she leaves her there to her own fate while she goes browsing all over the store. The callousness and weirdness of it is a bit overwhelming. You just keep on wanting to shake Lise and say ‘But what about Mrs. Fiedke? Did you forget about her?’
Mrs. Fiedke seems to have a couple of screws missing as well though:
“They are demanding equal rights with us,’(…) ‘That’s why I never vote with the Liberals. Perfume, jewellery, hair down to their shoulders, and I’m not talking about the ones who were born like that. I mean, the ones that can’t help it should be put on an island. It’s the others I’m talking about (…) But they want their equality today. All I say is that if God had intended them to be as good as us he wouldn’t have made them different from us to the naked eye...” pp.72
In case you couldn’t tell what she’s talking about, she’s referring to 1960’s men, with their crazy hair, etc. The whole thing is so batty, that it makes you wonder about the sanity of the entire human race, since seemingly everyone Lise meets says something slightly bonkers.
But the craziest is yet to come…
This is a tiny book – 100 pages – but damn if it doesn’t pack enough madness and suspense for anyone.
I probably haven’t done it justice here, it’s a hard book to describe in a way. But if you enjoy thrilling and inexplicable stories, then this is the one for you.
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