A set of unusual stories that make for deep thinking. ( )

THE DRIVER'S SEAT
Grippingly stressful and erratically tense, Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat shuffles from place to place, from vehicle to vehicle, and from one brusque hold of a man to another as it accelerates and crashes into dangerous grounds of distinctly female mental instability. Mostly desultorily bizarre with a dash of the psychological, this novella never rests. Spark’s words heighten and pile up as it culminates not for the who but for the why’s of its protagonist’s behaviour: the plain, brightly colour clothed Lise who’s excited for her vacation. Nothing odd with that until we are immediately intrigued and introduced by her “murder” early on, teased also by her mood swings which goes back and forth from flirtation to disgust, from manic to panic, until the narrative spirals down into helpless urgings only to shock with its determined intentions. The men horrifies, and an uneasy feeling pervades on their forceful demeanour, and the woman, Lise, frustrates and puzzles that is until the roles are reversed and only a feeling of horror is left.

In part, I can’t help but think Gone Girl on-the-surface but much, much darker and uses spontaneity to its advantage rather than breathing out through intricately intertwined schemes. But perhaps that is the illusion and the bluff: to be aimless without any need for revenge but to satisfy the need for a self-enacted, self-defined “mortal expiration.” The Driver’s Seat is short and sly yet lingers long in the head. I only wished it never ended quick, too sudden. But what does that say about me when I am bothered by such a personal desire? Could it be my own thirst for reading about female madness creeping around the corners of my own controlled composure in reality? Who knows? I’m scared. The mind works in mysterious ways; and sometimes I don't know myself.

PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE
Meticulously written in an unapologetically repetitive prose, Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie initially seems a bird’s eye view of the teaching profession. But as the story unfolds it does not only reveal her unconventional teaching methods which leans on the humanities with a surreal, semi-hushed fascination on fascism but also the grooming of six, personally-handpicked girls dubbed as the “Brodie set.” There, favouritism is unbridled; and resistance is a standard protocol on those against Miss Brodie and her ways. But how long can influence last until it fizzles with age?

With complex characters that deviate from society’s common black and white judgment and a timeline that runs back and forth the past and the future, it complicates the diluted notion that loyalty is unbeatable, even perennial: “it's only possible to betray where loyalty is due.” As such, the novel also has an air of mystery without trusting itself too willingly on twists and turns but on causes and effects. It shocks quietly oftentimes that it only fully hits once a chapter or a paragraph has ended. The novel’s prime is both its psychological and morale nature that's dizzyingly gripping, leaving Miss Brodie’s own prime seemingly mislaid, unattained, imagined. Its sentiments, aphorisms, recurring and fervently uttered like an incantation, as if done to deceive one's self more than others is effectively persuasive that as a reader, like a member of the Brodie set, I started to believe them myself. And similar to optical illusions, although they're momentarily captivating, their percept, sooner or later, are revealed to never last long. There is of course always a lesson to learn and a memory to keep. ( )

I'm less fond of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Girls of Slender Means, but The Driver's Seat and The Only Problem were fabulous. All a bit more depressing than most of what I've read by Muriel Spark, but still fabulous. ( )

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE
I thought this was a great novel. Miss Brodie, a teacher in an all-girls school, has a very unique style of teaching focusing on what she thought was the development of "her" girls, rather than following the usual curriculum. She has romantic visions of her past, and thinks that young girls should be heroic- whether by deeds or thoughts. The school's principal despises her and wants to her rid of her- but is not successful until the end.
Miss Brodie prides herself in selecting a handful of girls that she thinks most promising and educates them in her own way, to the consternation of the administration. Her way is mostly of ignoring the standard texts and techniques, and instructs the girls on her life experiences, her travels, her dreams, etc. The girls chosen become better thinkers that way. The administrators can't find fault to fire Miss Brodie, and the school principal tries to coerce or convince some of the girls to tell on Miss Brodie, so she can be dismissed. But Miss Brodie manages to persuade the girls to remain loyal to her, until the end when after they are older one of them, the one Miss Brodie least expects to do so, violates her confidence and betrays her. A sad ending for Jean Brodie who I was liking a lot.

THE ONLY PROBLEM
This is a very different type of novel from Jean Brodie, more like a "who done it" type of story. There is sexual confusing entanglement among the characters. The principal one is Harvey Gotham, who inherited millions from an uncle and has moved to the countryside in the Vosges region. He is writing a book on The Book of Job story, so there is an interesting mingling of the Job character and Harvey himself. Both were made to go through suffering without knowing the reason why it should be so.
His wife Effie moves with Ernest Howie with whom he has a child, named Clara. Effie's sister Ruth, who is married to Edward, an aspiring playwright, takes Clara with her and moves with Harvey. The reason Effie moves with Ernest is that Harvey, while on trip through Italy leaves her after she steals chocolate from a store when they stop on the road to get gas. I think I am making this more confusing that what it is.
Anyway, the most interesting part is when Effie apparently takes up with a gang of terrorists. Then the police comes and start investigating Harvey, who knows nothing about it.
The story, after all, was very amusing. I think Muriel Spark has a very good handle of writing. Her prose is engaging and light.

THE DRIVER'S SEAT
This is a weird story. Weird because its plot develops in a totally unexpected way; weird because the principal character acts in a weird way, unusual and unsuspected that is.
The story begins with Lise, the main character, in a store talking to a sales girl about a dress she wants to buy. The dress she likes is a bright colored dress. It's just not bright, it is "patterned with green and purple squares on a white background, with blue spots within the green squares, cyclamen spots within the purple." But the salesgirl tells her its stainless and Lise refuses the dress, despite her liking it, because she eats properly and doesn't spill things. She goes to another store and finds an equally hideous colored dress and a coat that even the clerk says the dress and the coat do not go together. That doesn't stop Lise, she buys them both. This is the beginning of the weirdness in the story.
The story continues on this vein. Lise is going on a vacation and everything she does is only to attract attention and to make sure that people remind her doing strange things. She makes sure to cause trouble while waiting to get her airplane ticket. She makes trouble on the plane by making strange comments to her fellow travelers. Makes arrangements to meet later on the person seating next to her. When she arrives, she goes from one strange incident to another, all along causing consternation and keeping people wondering about her.
But all this is a plan on her part. To die in a dramatic way, getting killed with a knife by a person who she directs how to do it. Very weird story indeed.
This is the third of Spark's novels I read, and it's definitely not like the other two I discuss above.Although I think I start to see a pattern in her novels. The principal characters of the novels are distinguished from the others by their idiosyncratic behavior perhaps. ( )

I read the first 3 of the 4 novels in this omnibus edition. Although I enjoyed all three, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was the best of the 3 (but not as good as Loitering With Intent). I found The Driver's Seat surprisingly bizarre and quite different in mood from all the other Spark novels I have read. ( )