Completely sick. In all the right ways.

Spark’s 1970 novel of a woman gone mad was dubbed ‘so stark as to be nightmarish’ by The New Yorker The story details the last day of protagonist Lise, who, while on holiday in Europe, is about to be murdered.

A masterpiece. No one could read it and mistake its force. Only Muriel Spark would have dreamed of writing it. The book’s near-jaunty tone would, in some fictional universes, be at odds with its jet-black content. In Spark-world, they go together, like murderer and victim.

A complexity which magnifies the impact of its spare length many times over. This is Spark at her best.

This incredibly slim and surreal slice of modern gothic is my favorite of hers.

Her spiny and treacherous masterpiece.

Some of her finest fictions are novellas rather than novels, short enough to be read in a singly dizzying sitting. The Driver’s Seat is an exemplary case: an extraordinary tour de force, a crime story turned inside out…