4. Zombie

By Joyce Carol Oates

3. The Driver's Seat

By Muriel Spark

The 1974 film, Identikit, had been on my watch list for some time with this intriguing description: "Liz Taylor as suicidal spinster; hard to find." 

 

I was sure I'd first learned of the film via Kier-La Janisse's House of Psychotic Women, but couldn't find any reference to either 'Identikit' nor 'The Driver's Seat' in the index -- only Secret Ceremony was cited in reference to Elizabeth Taylor (apparently Severin's House of Psychotic Women collection, an unusual DVD box set based on the book, features Identikit).

 

Last October, I finally watched Identikit, about “a flamboyantly dressed Englishwoman cutting a swath through Italy - tourism as exhibitionism, self-destruction as self-actualization.”  I believe it was due to Janisse's efforts that Identikit has been made available on various streaming services, like Prime and Shudder (I streamed it on Tubi). Still not sure whether I actually liked this unsettling film, but I certainly appreciated it as an unusual oddity, with its garish 70's Italo-trash aesthetics and Liz Taylor’s unhinged performance. 

 

The premise of Identikit reminded me very much of Martin Amis' London Fields, which I’d read many years ago and was intrigued by its morbid subject matter, mostly because I was a teenager and I'd never read anything like it before. I realize now that Amis was likely influenced by The Driver's Seat when he wrote London Fields:  both Lise and Nicola Six are ‘murderees’ by their own design.  As a reader also observed: Amis tends to get excoriated for his creation of Six, as if she’s the creation of a misogynist. Yet is she really that different a creation from Lise?  

 

After having watched Identikit, I wanted to get my hands on Muriel Spark's novella.

 

While reading the book, much of the mystery surrounding Lise’s motives was gone having already watched the film adaptation, which was incredibly faithful to The Driver’s Seat.  However, the book did provide a tiny clue into her erratic and unconventional behaviour (that seemed to be missing in the film):

Her lips are slightly parted: she, whose lips are usually pressed together with the daily disapprovals of the accountants’ office where she has worked continually, except for the months of illness, since she was 18, that is to say, for 16 years and some months. Her lips, when she does not speak or eat, are normally pressed together like the ruled line of a balance sheet, marked straight with her old-fashioned lipstick, a final and judging mouth, a precision instrument.

Lise seemed to have undergone some kind of long-term health issue and her death-wish may be due to the fact that she had some form of terminal illness, which she hadn't divulged to anyone.

A Letterboxd reviewer for Identikit took the words out of my mouth:

I was struck by how incredibly faithful the film is to the source, even adhering closely to the clever way the book plays with time. Giuseppe Patroni Griffi's images support the text wonderfully right from the opening shots of nude mannequins with heads covered in shiny reflecting foil. There is a constant motif of bright backlighting as well, reflecting the harsh personality of Lise, forcing your eyes to adjust and create definition. All lovely ways of reinforcing a story that centers around the concept of identity, and how we form and control the way we are perceived.

Much like Identikit, I wasn't sure whether I liked The Driver's Seat, but I certainly appreciated its oddness, its unsettling-ness, its frankness, as well as its leanness, much like this reader: 

 I decided to reread a book that is one of her shortest, most memorable and certainly starkest…  The Driver’s Seat (1970) is 101 pages long (in the irksome style of technology manufacturers who describe their products as “7.2mm thin”, I suppose I should say it’s 101 pages short). That is important because first, it shows that Spark has no interest in padding out her story – it is not one of those novels that is really an abruptly promoted novella – and second, because it means the story has almost no middle. It’s lean and hungry. There are many books whose beginnings or endings are praised, but how often do we say, The middle of that book? I couldn’t get enough of it. When you see a book without a middle – Patrick McGrath’s Dr Haggard’s Disease also comes to mind – it’s likely that rather than having only a beginning and an end, what has really happened is that the author has followed Kurt Vonnegut’s advice to “start as close to the end as possible.”

The Driver's Seat,was very much a dark, existential journey (physical and psychological) of a woman who lived a conventional life who comes to realize she doesn't have much to lose, and is looking for a way to end her life in her own terms, yet is still limited in agency due to 20th c. (patriarchal) society.  It was even shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1970.  I would definitely read more Muriel Spark, if I come across her other books.

2. A Haunting On the Hill

By Elizabeth Hand

For Christmas, my BIL had given me The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, a Booker Prize shortlister I wasn’t familiar with. He said I was welcome to exchange it at Mrs Dalloway’s for something that was more in my wheelhouse.  I browsed for a long time before I spotted a single hardbound copy of A Haunting on the Hill.  I had no idea Elizabeth Hand had written an official sequel to Shirley Jackon’s most famous novel, The Haunting of Hill House!  It was released only a few months ago in October 2023.

I was a big admirer of Hand’s horror mystery thriller Generation Loss, which first won her the 2008 Shirley Jackson award.  It seemed the planets were aligned for me to read A Haunting on the Hill: it was the exact same price as The Bee Sting, so the clerk was able to do a clean exchange for me. I was really looking forward to starting 2024 with a new release! 

The novel begins with Holly and her girlfriend Nisa taking a weekend break away from NYC.  Holly is a struggling playwright who got a lucky break with a $10,000 grant to produce The Witching Hour -- a passion project inspired by Elizabeth Sawyer, who was accused of witchcraft and executed in 17th c. New England.  Nisa, a singer-songwriter obsessed with murder ballads, will compose the music and perform the songs on stage with the actors.  

While out on a drive, Holly discovers Hill House.  She had been searching for a retreat, a place where her performers could rehearse, do read-throughs and collaborate on the development of the play.  She manages to find the local real estate agent, Ainsley, who happens to own Hill House.  Ainsley is reluctant at first, but agrees to rent Hill House to Holly for the week.

Holly brings on board Stevie, a sound designer who was a former child stage actor, and Amanda Greer, a lauded theatre actor who was involved in an unfortunate accident that somewhat rerailed her career.  At first I was a little wary, as the four main characters are self-involved theatre types. What kind of eye-rolling antics would I have to endure with a bunch of clashing egos thrown into a claustrophobic haunted house.  Holly has been frustrated by her stagnant career path and considers the grant her one chance at breaking out as a successful playwright, so she’s determined to make this work, no matter how her gut keeps screaming out there is something terribly wrong with Hill House

Holly’s gf Nisa is probably the most annoying character of the four.  Blessed with a beautiful voice, she’s constantly trying to “test the acoustics" by belting out her compositions.  And with an innate talent for penning melancholy folk songs, she has a promising musical career, yet deep-down she’s suspicious that Holly wants to reign her in.  She’s also narcissistic and having a secret affair with Stevie.

Stevie is one of Holly’s best friends.  As a former child stage actor, he was sexually abused by an older costar, and has grown up dealing wit his past trauma with drugs and hedonism.  Hill House first “reveals” itself to Stevie by giving him the illusion of a safe space in the form of a secret door that’s meant just for him.

Like Nisa, Amanda also likes to command attention, yet unlike Nisa, she is horribly insecure.  Her being older than the others doesn’t help either.  It’s important to note that all three women are desperate to either revive or kickstart their respective careers, and this desperation is what binds them to Hill House.

Overall, I found A Haunting on the Hill to be extremely disappointing, almost to the point of being badly written. First, I had no connection with any of the characters.  Yes, they were immature, unlikeable theatre people, but writers like Patricia Highsmith had a way of making unpleasant characters relatable, or at the very least, fascinating.  Hand herself had created one of the most deeply flawed characters in Cass Neary, yet I could still relate to Cass’ foibles.   The four main characters in A Haunting on the Hill were too self-obsessed to truly care for anyone.  Second, the story wasn't even remotely creepy, let alone scary.  The black menacing hares of unusual size did absolutely nothing for me.  What made Shirley Jackson’s novel so effective was, as the reader, you were never sure whether the house was truly haunted, or whether all the inexplicable occurrences were all in Eleanor’s mind.

The pacing was also off somehow.  There wasn’t any sense of impending doom that ever got properly built up.  The novel was written in the first person from Holly’s POV, yet equal time was spent inside the heads of Nisa, Stevie and Amanda. Holly didn’t have a particularly unique perspective, so I thought it was strange that Hand didn’t use the third person to narrate (which Jackson did for The Haunting of Hill House).    

   Now she grew angry.  They were supposed to all be in this together, with the same goal: the play.  Yet there was Stevie, upstaging her in the parlor, pulling out all the stops as that damned dog. Her voice and her songs were what knit the entire story together, even Holly had admitted that.

   And where was her reward?  Nisa had brought beauty and a sense of ancient mystery to Holly’s words.  She’d infused them with a power and terror that echoed down through centuries unitl Nisa held them, protected them, shared them with those she thought she could trust with something so precious. 

   But all they could see and hear were their own voices.  Petty. Selfish. Greedy.  Deaf to beauty when it rang out.

Hand went deeply into everyone’s past issues, and Hill House amplified their destructive neuroses and desires, yet everyone still felt so two-dimensional, and awful.  Holly, Nisa, Stevie, and Amanda were mostly bickering, bitchy theatre types.  The three women who watched over Hill House -- Ainsely, Melissa, and Evadne -- were even more thinly drawn.  They were supposed to be good witches yet their motives or histories were never developed.  Perhaps Hand wanted to keep them mysterious or inscrutable, but they did nothing to propel the narrative.  They didn't even provide any substantial backstory to Hill House.  There was also something about a family who had lived in Hill House during 80's and a teenaged son who had disappeared, but this is only briefly alluded to.  Ainsley had agreed to rent out Hill House too easily despite knowing the danger she’d be putting her renters in.  She also never reappeared again.  Only Melissa and Evadne made half-hearted attempts to convince the occupants to leave before the forecasted October snow storm.  When Melissa mentioned “it was too late”, she just took off! 

It would’ve made more sense if Ainsley had more of a connection with the house and was making excuses to rent it out, ie. nothing bad had happened there for a long time, and she needed the money, when in actual fact, the house wanted to be “fed” a la Burnt Offerings (which I still need to watch).  There could’ve been interpersonal conflicts between Ainsely, Melissa and Evadne (which would provide a nice counterpoint to Holly, Nisa and Amanda).  And Melissa and Evadne could’ve swooped in at the last minute to extricate Holly, Amanda and Stevie (because there had to be one sacrificial victim – it’s a horror thriller after all!).  But this never happened.

 Though Stevie himself had felt it, too, in the parlor, that primal thrill as he felt himself fold into someone else. Something else…

     He knew from Holly’s expression that his performance had already surpassed whatever she’d hoped for. He still felt it, a flash of the intense charge he got when he’d nailed a part a shivery current that ran through his entire body, everything seeming to tremble, on the verge of coming apart. The others had laughed when Amanda talked about actors being possessed, but he knew that she was right.

    It had been years since he’d felt it, like a drug he’d forsaken. Only this wasn’t bad for him, like drugs. This was what he’d needed, all along. This was what he’d been secretly praying for, the chance to give himself over to something more powerful than himself. The muse, an old acting teacher called it.

I really liked the idea of having a group of actors unknowingly channelling the latent power of Hill House during their rehearsals, much like the psychics in Jackson’s original story.  The characters were definitely seeing and hearing things that didn’t make sense.  But the sightings of the menacing big black hare didn’t make much narrative or symbolic sense - it just left me scratching my head.  And that secret door leading to a psychedelic passageway just seemed kind of silly.

Many ideas that had any potential ended up feeling half-baked.  I mentioned the pacing - it took far too long for things to happen.  Like Stevie finally opening that damned secret door near the end.   Then the storm came and the strange knocking.  Then Nisa snuck up to the door because she couldn’t stand the fact that Stevie would keep something like this from her, but like an idiot, ended up getting trapped inside the bowels of the house.  It was all kind of rushed.  Too much time was spent on four annoying characters and their bitchy interpersonal dynamics, their flaws and insecurities on repeat.  Not enough effort spent creating an effective or marginally scary horror story.  

In the end, it was Nisa who got “eaten” by Hill House, not Holly.  A year later, Holly was still able to produce her play with Amanda Greer as the star and using recordings of Nisa’s music.  But it wasn’t clear whether Holly had changed or even learned anything because none of the survivors really talked about what happened at Hill House. They just moved on with their lives.

I think an important detail that Hand missed was that it was never proven that Hill House was really haunted.  Anyone who had met their fate at the hands of Hill House was mentally unstable in some way.  Hill House always knew who the most vulnerable person was.  Nisa was too self-involved and full of herself to be an Eleanor Vance.  But as the most annoying character in the novel, I was nevertheless glad the house took her!

It's a shame really, as I really wanted to like this novel. Now I'm going to have to find a way to sell or giveaway this lovely hardcover!