She claims to various people that she is going to meet an unspecified boyfriend but we have considerable doubts about this. She does meet, on the plane, two young men. The first is one of the characters who is afraid of her and rapidly changes his seat. He will later murder her. The other is a keen devotee of macrobiotic cooking and plans to open a macrobiotic café in Naples. He is very eager to have sex with her (his macrobiotic training requires him to have an orgasm a day) and nearly does. Her journey is fairly conventional. Indeed, it seems to be like a visit to an English or American city. Most people seem to speak good English. Most of the visitors seem to be from English-speaking countries. Her main activity the first (and last) day of her visit is to go to a department store, ostensibly to buy gifts. On the way from her hotel she meets the Canadian widow Mrs. Fiedke, who accepts her and her strange behaviour. The two women travel around together. Mrs. Fiedke even tries to fix Lise up with her nephew, Richard, who is to arrive later that day and who is, of course, the man who will murder Lise. To summarize that much of the plot is still not to give anything away. The first sentence of the third chapter tells the reader how Lise will end up. The interest in "The Driver's Seat" lies elsewhere than in wondering what will happen a b Taylor, Benjamin (May 2010). "Goodbye Very Much: The many lives of Muriel Spark". Harper's. Harper's Foundation. 320 (1, 920): 78–82. Archived from the original on 11 October 2012 . Retrieved 21 August 2011. (subscription required) Muriel Spark archive". National Library of Scotland. Archived from the original on 15 March 2014 . Retrieved 15 March 2014. Muriel Spark, Novelist Who Wrote 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,' Dies at 88". The New York Times. 23 April 2010. Archived from the original on 23 July 2018 . Retrieved 11 February 2017.

Muriel Spark - Wikipedia Muriel Spark - Wikipedia

Lise. But Bill, who thinks he knows better, keeps after her all day, in search of a convert and an orgasm, spilling rice from a loose zipper on his suitcase. Hague, Angela, and Isabel Bonnyman Stanley. “Muriel Spark.” In Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Revised Edition, edited by Carl Rollyson. Vol. 6. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2000.he is driven into heresy and ersatz religion, like Bill the Macrobiotic and Mrs. Friedke the Jehovah's Witness, or he is driven like Lise and the rosy-faced young man into neurosis and self-destruction. Lise is only in the driver's British Council complies with data protection law in the UK and laws in other countries that meet internationally accepted standards. What about all those other men and women who die at the hands of others – what if they really did conspire with their abusers? How would a woman go about ‘asking for it’? And how would it appear to bystanders? What, afterwards, would the remnants of her life be worth? A far cry from Morningside", The Scotsman, 23 April 2006, archived from the original on 11 July 2012 , retrieved 8 April 2007 . In a narrative so riddled with inconsistencies, the key to this novel isn’t the dress at all, but the plurality of voices that relate its events. The text, like the title, clamours to answer the question: just who’s driving this thing? Who is the protagonist of The Driver’s Seat?

Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat Whose line is it anyway? Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat

Lise is a young woman (“neither good-looking nor bad-looking”) in her early thirties who leaves her job in an accountant’s office for a holiday in the south. (It is never stated precisely, but Lise seems to be German and her vacation destination appears to be Italy, which was the case in the incident that inspired the book.) It was not until 1957, after conversion to Catholicism, that she published her first novel, The Comforters, a book of extraordinary originality that won the applause of Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh - not because they were also Catholic authors but because of the skill and depth of her writing. Four more novels followed in the next three years, all of high and varied interest, but it was the fifth of them, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), that introduced her work to a large popular audience, especially when it was turned into a successful play and later filmed.

The United Kingdom's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. The salesgirl shouts, as if to assist her explanation. ‘Specially treated fabric … If you spill like a drop of sherry you just wipe it off.’” (emphasis added) Dame Muriel Sarah Spark DBE FRSE FRSL ( née Camberg; 1 February 1918 – 13 April 2006) [1] was a Scottish novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist.