Muriel Camberg was born in the Bruntsfield area of Edinburgh, the daughter of Bernard Camberg, an engineer, and Sarah Elizabeth Maud (née Uezzell). [2] [3] Her father was Jewish, born in Edinburgh of Lithuanian immigrant parents, and her English mother had been raised Anglican. She was educated at James Gillespie's School for Girls (1923–35), where she received some education in the Presbyterian faith. [4] In 1934–35 she took a course in "commercial correspondence and précis writing" at Heriot-Watt College. She taught English for a brief time and then worked as a secretary in a department store. A far cry from Morningside", The Scotsman, 23 April 2006, archived from the original on 11 July 2012 , retrieved 8 April 2007 .

Our academic experts are ready and waiting to assist with any writing project you may have. From simple essay plans, through to full dissertations, you can guarantee we have a service perfectly matched to your needs. View our services After reading The Driver's Seat, I know the plot as such works beautifully - a determined murderee, looking for the murderer, is an exciting thought experiment, but I can't believe Amis got away with that lengthy rip-off without punishment. He stole the story and put a lot of testosterone into the mix. Well, I have a few slimy, straggling, grey lumps in the bloody cavity behind what's left of my eyes. So I'll do my best here, but please understand, I'm working at a deficit. The omniscient, but not necessarily reliable, narrator is obsessive, compulsively noting minor details as Nicholson Baker does in The Mezzanine (see my review HERE), especially regarding lips and eyes.

I’m not sure what to say about this work, different from any other Spark I’ve read. While reading I’d stop to think, did I read what I just thought I read? A few times, near the beginning, in reference to what the main character’s thinking, Spark writes Who knows? and at its last repetition, I thought, well, if you don’t know, I sure don’t. You know what I mean, those fleeting instances when a book will just pound you and leave you reeling...the moments that reinvest your passion for reading and the written word. The ending was one of those moments. A completion of a momentous journey that is both utterly successful and an abject failure...leaving nothing but victims in its wake. The sex-death Lise plans is stand-in for the romance, intimacy and full-blown eroticism that elude her in life. It’s a compromise on the loneliness that follows sexual union. Within The Driver’s Seat Lise takes charge and becomes the instigator of her own murder, inverting all traditional stereotypes of a victim being nothing but a passive object. This strong woman being brutally murdered is a common theme throughout many forms of fiction, whether that’s in writing or on screen. Spark takes this trope and inverts it by giving Lise her own sense of control by being the central character in this novella, she will not be forgotten in a heartbeat as with many victims. Spark also uses this story to question the nature of victimhood, however she also gets very close to encouraging the narrative of victim-blaming with the excessive amount of violence against women featured within the novella. The Driver’s Seat investigates the relationship between the aggressor and the victim, it explores the way in which the aggressive cycle continues throughout this relationship. In the oppressive society that Lise lives in creates victims from nowhere, Spark argues that we could all be a victim when faced with this form of society, no matter to what degree. Spark also presents how easily a victim can turn into an aggressor when she truly wants something. She appears inappropriately flirty when talking to the airline clerk, and greedy and ignorant with Bill. She’s irresponsible and unhinged with Mrs Fiedke and, frightening and controlling when dealing with her killer.

Ian Bannen’s performance is equally impressive as the obsessive-compulsive Bill, a man who is an unhinged mess of neuroses and who becomes the hyperactive counterbalance to Lise. These are both over the top performances (Taylor’s hair alone is terrifying), and they may be too much for some viewers, but they are what this film demands. There are also some lovely cameos, particularly from Gino Giuseppe and Mona Washbourne, and some distinctly strange ones – step forward Italian idol Guido Manneri, and Andy Warhol as an unnamed English Lord! But they are all just bystanders as the camera follows Lise to the bitter end, and in this it does justice to Spark’s original vision. Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh: Honorary Graduates". www1.hw.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 18 April 2016 . Retrieved 4 April 2016. At the end of the novel another cut scene teases us with the details of Bill’s police custody. “‘Lise, he says. ‘I don’t know her other name. We met on the plane.’” When we first meet Lise she is dress shopping for her trip abroad, and immediately the reader is made aware that all is not well. When offered a dress which “doesn’t stain”, she rips the offending item off as if it burns her, angry that she should be offered such a thing. If she is going to have a new dress, she wants it to stain, for reasons that will soon become apparent. It’s an arresting opening, and sets an uneasy tone. a b "Muriel Spark leaves millions to woman friend rather than son", The Standard, 14 April 2007, archived from the original on 7 December 2017 , retrieved 1 April 2018 .I just found myself intermittently anxious for Spark to more deeply explore certain of her narrative observations, to provide a bit more commentary on events. There was some of this, but it generally failed to reach the deep places inside me...until the very end. a b Jenny Turner (17 April 2006), "Dame Muriel Spark", The Guardian, archived from the original on 14 May 2008 , retrieved 28 September 2007 . Dame Muriel Spark, 1918–2006: The novelist of identity", The Weekly Standard, 1 May 2006, archived from the original on 6 August 2006 , retrieved 12 July 2006 .

Spark and her son Samuel Robin Spark at times had a strained relationship. They had a falling out when Robin's Orthodox Judaism prompted him to petition for his late great-grandmother to be recognized as Jewish. (Spark's maternal grandparents, Adelaide Hyams and Tom Uezzell had married in a church. Tom was Anglican. Adelaide's father was Jewish, but her mother was not; Adelaide referred to herself as a "Jewish Gentile.") Spark reacted by accusing him of seeking publicity to advance his career as an artist. [26] Muriel's brother Philip, who himself had become actively Jewish, agreed with her version of the family's history. During one of her last book signings in Edinburgh, she told a journalist who asked if she would see her son again: "I think I know how best to avoid him by now." [27] [28] [29] Bibliography [ edit ] Novels [ edit ]

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This is the novel’s final twisted subversion. There’s no clear answer about who is the driving seat but, in weighing up the last moment’s of a life, the proportioning of blame and excuse is compelling and unavoidable. Spark began writing seriously, under her married name, after World War II, beginning with poetry and literary criticism. In 1947 she became editor of the Poetry Review. This position made Spark one of the few female editors of the time. [15] Spark left the Poetry Review in 1948. [15] In 1953 Muriel Spark was baptized in the Church of England but in 1954 she decided to join the Roman Catholic Church, which she considered crucial in her development toward becoming a novelist. [1] She was formally instructed by Dom Ambrose Agius, a Benedictine monk of Ealing Priory, whom she had known from her Poetry Society days, and was received into the Roman Catholic Church on 1st May 1954 by Dom Ambrose. Penelope Fitzgerald, a fellow novelist and contemporary of Spark, wrote that Spark "had pointed out that it wasn't until she became a Roman Catholic ... that she was able to see human existence as a whole, as a novelist needs to do". [16] In an interview with John Tusa on BBC Radio 4, she said of her conversion and its effect on her writing that she "was just a little worried, tentative. Would it be right, would it not be right? Can I write a novel about that – would it be foolish, wouldn't it be? And somehow with my religion – whether one has anything to do with the other, I don't know – but it does seem so, that I just gained confidence." Graham Greene, Gabriel Fielding and Evelyn Waugh supported her in her decision. Her first interest was in poetry, and after World War II she became General Secretary of the Poetry Society and Editor of Poetry Review. Her own Collected Poems 1 was published in 1967. In 1951 she won a short story competition run by The Observer and from then on also wrote fiction. Her first novel, The Comforters, was published in 1957. Like the protagonist of Spark’s debut novel The Comforters (1957), The Driver’s Seat implies that Lise may have some awareness of her own fictional nature. Abandoning the book she bought to read on the plane, Lise says: