In the Driver's Seat: Stories [Hardcover]

Helen Simpson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2007

A dark, dazzling, surprisingly funny new collection of stories (“Masterly” —Adam Mars Jones, The Observer; “A virtuoso performance” —Jane Shilling, The Sunday Telegraph) about single women and wives in various phases of midlife—anxious mothers, besotted mothers, beset mothers—in a (futile) search for security and consolation.

Helen Simpson’s stories are short but by no means small. One story takes the Iraq war as its subject; another describes a smoker’s reprieve from death by lung cancer; in another, a simple tale of home maintenance—a woman in a conversation with the carpenter replacing her door after a break-in—becomes a deftly sketched study of grief. In still another, Simpson manages the seemingly impossible—producing laughter at terminal illness and untimely death (this might be the first story in which the amputation of a limb provides a happy ending). And finally, the story entitled “Constitutional”—a pun on one of the word’s meanings: a walk taken for the benefit of one’s health—deals with memory, family, Alzheimer’s, oak trees, pregnancy for the over-forties, stolen photographs, and crossword puzzles.

Helen Simpson’s stories move and disturb us as they light up the human gift for making the best of it—whatever it is.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Adulthood weighs heavily on the shoulders of well-heeled British marrieds with children in these 11 new stories by Simpson (Dear George), who extracts gentle pathos and humor from her aging characters as they despair of their narrowing futures. To a group of lithe young teens eavesdropping on an English couple with a new baby at a Mediterranean resort, the ghastly emotional neediness and flabby bodies of the adults seem grotesque and frightening. In "Every Third Thought," a mother of three daughters bemoans the unrelenting news of sickness among her friends—until a bus hits her (the story continues). Anxiety about the loss of romance and vitality leeches into "If I'm Spared," about a philandering husband who ceases his cheating to get treatment for lung cancer. There's a steadiness throughout, as when Simpson records the attachment of Zoe to her third and last child during their daily drive to school in "Early One Morning." The meandering last story, "Constitutional," is a meditation on mortality and memory that's literally a walk in the park, and it beautifully showcases Simpson's limpid prose and unforced deductions. (May)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* From an English author, a stunningly imaginative collection of 11 short stories--with emphasis on short. These hard-edged but soft-centered pieces are equal parts humorous and satiric. They are the author's own perceptions of real life from unique, even odd perspectives. Simpson could not care less about offering tidy moral lessons on how life should be led. Her intention in these tough-as-nails yet poetically styled stories is to get us to laugh along with her at the silliness of human nature but also to laugh with her over the fact that she, and we as well, are all part of human nature's silliness. "The Door" concerns a woman replacing an important feature of her house--as well as of her sense of personal security--after a break-in and finding herself stepping through a psychological frontier of peacefulness as she locates someone to do the job. The collection's crown jewel is "Every Third Thought," which opens provocatively with the lines "It happened very fast, without warning. One day everybody started dying" and proceeds to mock people's obsession with other people's illnesses, which, of course, is rooted in the universal condition of schadenfreude. One character, in reflecting on how everyone in her particular social group seems to have fallen ill, concludes, "I put it down to dairy. And the pill. Cut out cheese and change to condoms, that's what I say!" Remarkable fiction. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (May 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307265226
• ISBN-13: 978-0307265227
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,488,514 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 5-Star Short Stories, May 21, 2008

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Driver's Seat: Stories (Hardcover)

Helen Simpson is an accomplished and awarded British writer. This is her fourth collection of short stories, and she has also published a novella. Her stories are enjoyable vignettes on the lives of ordinary British people - generally women. They are thoughtful and sometimes funny, wise and often witty. Simpson does a bit of tongue in cheek as her characters maneuver through their days or moments.

One of my favorites, "Early One Morning" describes a mother and her youngest son as they share time in the car on the way to school. They pick up a couple of other students and the mother chooses to let the kids talk to each other without adding her comments - thereby hearing things they might never think to say to an adult. While they talk, she also realizes that it won't be long before her son no longer needs these rides every day - that by age eleven he will be independently taking the bus. It's a sweet story and truthful to the way that kids act. The final moment is especially touching.

The title piece, "In the Driver's Seat," covers another ride in a car. This time the driver is the car owner's boyfriend-and he is driving too fast. The owner keeps asking him to slow down, but he is intent on showing off or showing power to both the owner and the story's narrator in the back seat. The narrator wonders if he is always like this - and wonders also about their relationship.

The original title piece, "Constitutional," is the ruminations of a teacher taking a walk around the neighborhood park on her lunch hour. She passes the same sights every day, but things change with the seasons. Different people are in the park each day, and she thinks about them as she walks by. She has it timed so that she can make the circle of her walk within her allotted time.

These are small, but thoroughly enjoyable stories.

(Originally published as Constitutional in London by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Random House in 2005. First published in hard cover in the U.S. by Alfred A Knopf in 2007.)

Armchair Interviews says: Another book for the shelf of any lover of short stories.