‘And the material doesn’t stain,’ the salesgirl says.

This episode focuses on Muriel Spark's 1970 novel The Driver's Seat, diving into Spark’s author's technique of "getting in and out" of scenes and the way she mediates the reader-protagonist relationship. The third person present-tense narration continually—and fearlessly—drops us into the middle of scenes without explanation, using a strange, compelling distanced narration and making inexplicable temporal jumps to the future.

We talk about how the novel's effectiveness comes from this controlled instability and unique narrational distance, in that, despite following the protagonist Lise in limited third person, readers are kept at a distance from her interior thoughts. The discussion highlights how Spark breaks conventional rules by, among others, revealing early that Lise will be found murdered, yet maintains reader interest through compositional techniques rather than traditional character development or exposition. A totally fascinating novel, one that might actually be “completely unique.”

Stay tuned for the Substack post with complete show notes in a few days, and in the meantime—stay critical.

Merci !

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1882literary.substack.com