LoveReading Says
As fresh as fiction comes, Priya Guns’ Your Driver is Waiting is nothing but brash and brilliantly inventive. Offering incisive commentary on immigration, race and the struggle to survive in an inequitable society, it tells a madcap tale of great divides, with an across-the-divide romance cutting through its core.
Dry-as-a-bone funny, Damani is one of those who are struggling to survive. She cares for her mother and works all hours as an underpaid driver to (just about) stay afloat in a city that’s all-but exploding with protests. The diversity of placards tells you everything you need to know about the scale of unrest, from “Working-Class People of the World Unite” and “BLACK TRANS LIVES MATTER”, to “Refugees are people!” and “Climate Justice is Gender and Racial Justice”.
In this tinderbox, Damani picks up Jolene as a customer. She’s a rich white social worker who comes from the kind of world in which people have summer houses and friends with villas in Italy. The intense pull between them is palpable. To Damani, “If Jolene was anything, she was the sun. Perfect at a distance, but up close she could hurt my skin”.
As things turn out, it’s not long before things shift to Damani describing Jolene as “a flower withering before my eyes. She was courageous, bold and ugly”. After gaining Damani’s trust, after Damani has worked to see beyond her white privilege, Jolene delivers an unforgivable blow that shows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was “like the rest of them”, despite her façade of doing good and being different.
Honest, fiery, and fearless, Your Driver is Waiting is a whip-smart, wild ride of a novel, with potent social resonance.
Joanne Owen
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Your Driver Is Waiting Synopsis
Damani is tired. Every day she cares for her mum, drives ride shares to pay the bills and is angry at a world that promised her more before spitting her out. The city is alive with protests, fighting for people like her, but Damani can barely afford - literally - to pay attention.
That is until the summer she meets Jolene and life opens up. Jolene seems like she could be the perfect girlfriend - attentive, attractive, an ally - and their chemistry is undeniable. Jolene's done the reading, she goes to every protest, she has all the right answers. So maybe Damani can look past the one thing that's holding her back: Jolene is rich. And not only rich, but white, too. But just as their romance intensifies, just as Damani learns to trust, Jolene does something unforgivable, setting off a truly explosive chain of events.
Brimming with heart, humour, and rage, Your Driver Is Waiting is a powerful, blackly funny social satire that announces the arrival of a fearless new voice.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781838954260 |
| Publication date: |
2nd March 2023 |
| Author: |
Priya Guns |
| Publisher: |
Atlantic Books |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
304 pages |
| Primary Genre |
General Fiction
|
| Other Genres: |
|
Priya Guns Press Reviews
A ferocious new voice. A fierce and immersive debut. A story that made me rock back and forth with awe. Priya Guns's voice blazes on the page with humour, heart, and a fortitude that is inspiring to behold. There's no doubt who's in the driver's seat. I was just grateful to be along for the ride. - Weike Wang, author of JOAN IS OKAY and CHEMISTRY
A compelling character study with an electrifying ending, Your Driver is Waiting offers a potent social critique overflowing with love, despair, passion, and rage. Priya Guns brings to the page a voice infused with both bravado and vulnerability in this madcap story you won't want to put down. - Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch
Your Driver Is Waiting is a perfect gut punch of a novel. This is my favorite kind of writing, full of love and real friendship and frustrations boiled over and the urge to burn everything down. Priya Guns is phenomenal here, her writing is laser-focused and hilarious and full of aching need. This is a hard-hitting masterpiece. I devoured it. - Kristen Arnett, author of WITH TEETH and MOSTLY DEAD THINGS
In powerful and unrelenting prose, Priya Guns's Your Driver is Waiting has accomplished a nearly impossible feat: scathing social commentary about the inequalities of modern day America in a propulsive, funny and tender story about love, community and loss. Damani is an unforgettable heroine that now lives rent-free in my heart. Welcome her into yours. - Cleyvis Natera, author of Neruda on the Park
Your Driver Is Waiting captures something vital about our contemporary moment, about the millions of lives spent on the margins. It's deft enough to navigate questions of class, precarity, race and economic displacement, while managing to be so full of hope, full of fight, full of heart. - Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass
Your Driver Is Waiting is so real it's scary... Guns expertly exposes the palpable dangers of 'well-meaning' white folks and calls into question who, if anyone, is to be held accountable for the growing ills of modern society. However, she also shows us that a brighter world isn't in our rear-view, but right in front of us, so long as we choose to drive on. You'll want to take this ride. - Mateo Askaripour, New York Times bestselling author of Black Buck
Guns' sharp and bonkers debut reimagines Taxi Driver for the Uber era... plenty of rich commentary on gig work, race, and white privilege. This has plenty of bite. - Publishers Weekly
From page one, this novel had its hands around my neck. A voice that is somehow simultaneously fearless and intensely vulnerable. The only thing slicker than her narrator's driving is Guns's ability to deliver sharp social commentary that will make you unsure of whether you want to laugh or cry. Your Driver Is Waiting is an unhinged joyride - whether you buckle up or not, you're sure to be gripping the edge of your seat. - Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of PIZZA GIRL
A biting and uproarious take on the gig economy, capitalism, and race, this is the kind of book you read in one sitting. - Buzzfeed
It's simply impossible to put this book down. - Barnes & Noble most buzzed about debuts 2023
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