Upending reader expectations, Muriel Spark’s novella The Driver’s Seat makes for a disorientating, queasy read.

Aghast at the helpful suggestions of a salesgirl, Lise marches out of the opening scene and careens from chapter to chapter hell-bent on a diabolical date with fate.

“…I’m afraid of traffic. You never know what crackpot’s going to be at the wheel of another car,” Lise tells a stranger over coffee. The danger here though is not the crackpot at the other wheel, but the crackpot at her own.

Not that Lise is necessarily a cracked pot. What she is is assertive, deadly assertive.

Everything is upended: even the omniscient narrator - who glides over the action like a film director, often unsure of the heroine’s motives, but reporting her every move with detached precision.

If a murder mystery was a washing-up glove and you wriggled your bloody hand in and then tugged the rubbery thing off inside-out, you would have this novel.

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