In the Driver’s Seat
by Helen Simpson
Published by Vintage Contemporaries – Random House, Inc. New York
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Reviewed by Beth Cummings
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.