Drive

This felt like pretentious noir, like an action screenplay. "Caught in some variant of that abstract..." What? Come on, give me a break! This is about a stunt driver who also drives for guys robbing pawn shops, etc. He also does a number of cold blooded murders. It is my humble opinion that noir tends to get over-rated by the critics. They love the genre and noir authors are getting away with murder.

I agree with the other one-stars that the characters lack any sort of depth and the story itself is very difficult to follow... but I'd also like to add on that the book, to me, reads very condescendingly. While reading it, I felt like the writer thinks he's smarter than the reader and that the reader should consider themselves lucky to be allowed enough to read his words. This is one of those times where the movie really is better than the book.

Short, compact, deadly noir. Just wonderful work. Simple, basic, gritty. There are sentences and phrases here that tell whole volumes. This shows that you don't need to put out a five hundred page treatise. Like classic pulp fiction, this is right on target, right to the point.

Like Richard Stark's Parker, Drive is the only name you know this guy by. And it's the only thing he knows how to do. Hollywood stunt driver by day and the world's best getaway driver by night. Drive yearns to drive in capers. The problem is his partners never seem to focus only on the task at hand. They are often too busy changing plans and double-crossing. And in life, few things ever go as planned.

This book was terrible!!! The writting didn't make sense at parts (I had to re-read 3 charpters more than once to make any sort of sense out of it) and the characters are VERY under devolopped and the story wasn't very well thought out.

I recomend you skip the book and just watch the movie of the same name it is soooo much better (thanks to the very talented Nicholas WinDing Refn)

If you want many of our cultures most persistent (and false) myths fed back to you this is the book to read.

The silent self reliant hero who is perfect at everything he does. He says he only drives, but he kills with as much skill as the likewise mythic Terminator. Never makes a mistake, even as a little kid he is able to one-up bullies with flawless technique. Always in total control, nothing in life, assassins, cars or women ever gets him worked up. He is as cool as overcharged freon air conditioner.

The Driver is as unreal as the situations he gets into.

If you want characters described as "a college age waitress with varicose veins" this is the book for you. If revenge fiction gets you revved up, this is the book for you.

As a genre cliche, the book is perfect. If you want more than empty literary calories, drive on.

I became intrigued about James Sallis' "Drive" after learning of Ryan Gosling's participation in Nicolas Winding Refn's adaptation of the book. Gosling's against-the-grain picks have been very impressive to me. He could have gone all-out Hollywood after The Notebook. Instead, he went the other direction: Half Nelson;Stay;Lars and the Real Girl among other deft selections. He has my total respect for those choices. My understanding is that he listened to Winding Refn's vision of the book, bought in, committed. As my prep to see the movie, I committed to read the book.

It's not much of a commitment: you can devour this 150+ pp novella in a single sitting. Sallis' writing is sparse and hard-boiled. Protagonist "Driver" (Gosling's character) is (as I've seen described elsewhere) "ultra laconic." Indeed, he's a man of few words. He spreads them around like they cost money. One entire dialogue after an epic driving duel with a fellow driving stuntman goes like this:

"Righteous driving."
"Yourself."

Sometimes, you need to re-read a dialog once or twice to work out who said what. I've needed to do the same for Cormac McCarthy. Good company.

By day, Driver does driving stunts. By night, he moonlights as a getaway driver in scores, jobs...whatever you want to call them. 'cept Driver doesn't participate in the crime itself or the planning. He just drives. That's the deal.

Then, a deal goes south. Driver is left holding the cash. The mob gets involved. The violence gets heavy. The ultimate scene - a restaurant meeting in which Driver attempts to turn over the cash - is a thing of writing beauty. Is it rapprochement...or does something sinister lurk behind his dining companion's bonhomie? Read to find out.

Driver is a survivor. A movie stuntman, he makes his way on raw talent, the horrors of his Arizona childhood left behind at sixteen when he walks away from his foster parents, steals their car and heads to LA. Known for his driving skills, Driver is caught up in another, more lucrative trade, driving getaway cars for small time robbers, until the last job, one that leaves him injured, three dead bodies scattered about the room.

Trying to make right the robbers' terrible mistake in stealing from this particular mark, Driver runs up against the implacable vengeance of the rightful owner of almost a quarter of a million dollars, a ruthless man who is not satisfied with the return of the money, set on revenge. Driver carefully picks his way through this minefield of killers, outthinking and outsmarting them all, if only by a hair's breadth. In flashes of the past, reliving the few decent friendships he has known, Sallis has written a fascinating character, one of the unseen, navigating a world filled with pitfalls.

Drive has the emotional black and white clarity of human behavior, the essential impulse to survive without nuance; as Driver's soul is compromised by his decision to tread a darker path, he is drawn into a morass of moral ambiguity, inextricably linked to the violence of the subculture. But then Driver's life has been defined by violence and he has built his days around a deep understanding of how little the world offers and how much he must take for himself. Drawn to the raw energy and thrill of skillful driving, Driver is seduced by the rush, the danger.

As sparse and clean as any noir thriller, Drive is a tale of shadows, those that lurk in the psyche and those that fill the darkened streets with menace. Driver treads where few dare, oblivious in his singleness of purpose, life lessons quickly taken to heart. Yet Sallis fills this world with a stark poetry, slashes of reality and the moral dilemma of those with no prospects and nothing to lose, trapped in the hungry maw of a soulless city: "The sun let go its hold and the city's lights, a hundred-thousand impatient understudies, stepped in." This is a world that exists below the sightline, the inhabitants of a decaying society playing out life and death dramas without second chances. Driver is the lost boy, fighting his way through the world he inhabits. Luan Gaines/2006.

Having read both Drive and Driven (the sequel) in about a day and half as they are fairly short and concise novels, I'm not sure I can totally relate to many of the positive reviews here. The author does have a dry prose which serves well to depict the grit and dilapidation of certain american sprawling suburbs like Phoenix and LA, where most of the book takes place, however the story line is very disjointed and downright confusing. Present actions interleave with past ones, which interleave with future ones, to a point where the entire plot starts looking like a car swerving out of control. As a better analogy, imagine the story being a big jigsaw puzzle that you break apart, shuffle well then pick randomly piece by piece and read. Some passages definitely require a second pass in order to make sense of what's really going on.
Second thing I disliked is how easily the main character dispatches goons, without any weapons or prior training in martial arts as if they're simple, mindless puppets or automatons. But make no mistake, they all come at him prepared and armed with deadly intent, yet somehow he always prevails unscathed. Completely unrealistic. Even 007 has closer calls! And for those that are looking to retrace segments of the famous movie, there's about 10% overlap with the onscreen adaptation...which is very, very loosely based on this book. On the positive side, some dialogues are fun to read if you can make abstraction of the cookie-cutter mobsters.

Driver, the damaged main character of this minimalist noir novel, works as a stunt man by day and as the driver of getaway cars at night. Purely pragmatic, he has no real dreams and no long-term goals, the result of his violent childhood, which was not a childhood at all. No one gets close to him, though he occasionally shows signs that he has some feelings for other damaged creatures. When it comes to his work, however, he is all business--"I don't know anyone, I don't carry weapons. I drive."

Opening dramatically with Driver leaning against a wall in a Motel 6 room, his arm wounded so badly it is useless, with three dead bodies around him, the novel repeats these images like a bizarre refrain, as the background for this scene and the action which follows it are revealed. In terse prose, as efficient in conveying information as Driver is in killing those who threaten him, Sallis follows Driver as he moves between Los Angeles and Phoenix, doing jobs. Episodes from his life hit the reader with the force of gunfire and in random order, connected not by transitions but through the character and violent background of Driver as his life unfolds. Scenes from Driver's film assignments overlap with scenes from his real life, sometimes inspiring Driver to reminisce or to try to look forward to see how and why he ended up where he is.

Actions speak louder than words here, but the dialogue, when it occurs, is memorable and dramatic. Scenes in which Driver tries to visit his estranged mother and later his foster family are intensely moving because they emphasize an emotional connection which is otherwise lacking in his life. He is intelligent, and he keeps trying to communicate with people through words, though the circumstances of his life are almost entirely violent. He has no dreams, forced to believe instead in a brutal reality--he is Borges, the writer/realist, not Don Quixote, the tilter at windmills, he notes. "I don't think [however], our lives are thrust upon us," he explains in one conversation. "What it feels like to me is, they're forever seeping up under our feet."

A dramatic, thoughtful, and powerfully moving examination of the life of someone who has few choices, this novel transcends its darkness and violence to show the continuing desire for connection even among life's most violent people. n Mary Whipple

This is an excellent contemporary noir novel in which a character becomes caught up by circumstances largely beyond his control and must then struggle to somehow survive.

The main protagonist, Driver, is a stunt driver for the movies, and there's none better. But he also moonlights driving for robberies, and the thrill is principally in the driving itself rather than in the monetary rewards. He makes his position clear to anyone who wants to employ his services: "I drive. That's all I do. I don't sit in while you're planning the score or while you're running it down. You tell me where we start, where we're headed, where we'll be going afterwards, what time of day. I don't take part, I don't know anyone, I don't carry weapons. I drive."

Apart from his driving, Driver leads a minimalist existence, moving frequently, paying cash, leaving virtually no trail. But then, as must always happen in a book like this, things go wrong on a number of levels; Driver winds up alienating some very bad people and the game is on.

This is a beautifuly written book, lean and taut without a single wasted word. One hopes that the release of the movie made from the book will finally garner for it and for James Sallis the wider attention that both he and this book certainly deserve.

After a harrowing childhood that ended with sitting at the table while his mother murdered his father, Driver gets shunted into the foster care system. At 16 he runs away and ends up in Hollywood where he does the one thing he loves and does best: driving. But while the stunt driver business provides him enough success to get him by, Driver finds himself drawn into the lives and struggles of others. One of them is an armed robber with a wife and child that Driver cares about. But Driver has rules about his life in crime: he drives, that's but. When a robbery goes wrong, though, and Driver's friend is betrayed, he gets drawn into a headlong rush toward vengeance.

James Sallis is the author of the six-book (thus far) series about New Orleans private eye Lew Griffin. He's started a new series featuring troubled, ex-police detective Turner. In addition to his writing, Sallis also writes poetry and is a musicologist.

Although it comes in at just under 160 pages and is told with verve and brevity, DRIVE is no means a simplistic read. The story doubles back on itself like a snake from time to time, jumping linear progression with the story without warning or any kind of demarcation. I found myself lost a few times, but the story kept drawing me in. The way that the novel progresssed and regressed became familiar and I enjoyed the way that I saw the plot tighten while at the same time I glimpsed more of Driver's background.

Written in a noir style, Sallis delivers a gritty, fist-in-your-face read that hardboiled readers will enjoy. The book isn't for everyone, but fans of Richard Stark and newcomer Duane Swierczynski should eat this up.

Readers who delight in noir have a treat in store.

This short novel moves back and forth in both time and place, following a few weeks in the life of Driver - a character who provides no other name. He has a double career - first as a stunt driver for the LA film industry, self trained and among the best in the highly skilled group of specialists. And in the evenings and between film jobs he drives for thieves and con men. But that is all he does - drive. No burglary, no guns, no other participation.

A moonlighting venture goes wrong and sends Driver in search of those who double crossed him. In spare prose, important people in Driver's past and present life are clearly drawn and believable, some presented only as traces from Driver's memory. Although fragmentary, these brief references provide perfect motivation for Driver's actions as he moves toward his moments of revenge. He is a man not always on the right side of the law, or even of a just society, yet in Sallis' hands he becomes a man worthy of respect.

Occasionally #1 comes up with the correct rating for a book even though, in this case, she is confused about the central character's name. James Sallis has crafted an excellent noir thriller -- like a complicated mosaic -- from small, tantalizing fragments in the life of Driver, a Hollywood stunt driver who moolights behind the wheel of getaway cars. Driver is so cool his pores exude frost rather than sweat.

As the story begins, people are trying to kill Driver because of a Phoenix heist that went wrong. Flashbacks from Driver's past life are interspersed with those from the robbery and his present efforts to extricate himself from his predicament.

Sallis transmutes a simple double-cross and revenge plot into a stylish tour de force. Highly recommended.

The publishing industry is filled with predictable books. By that I don't mean just formula genre books, such as most romances, action-adventure books, and mysteries, but mainstream books with predictable elements: anti-hero, rising arcs of action over three hundred or so pages, happy ending or not, closure. Such elements have become so ingrained in the industry that books that go against them must be so strongly written that readers (and critics) overlook the lack of familiar elements. In Drive, the powerful prose of James Sallis provides just such a distraction, in a book so off-beat that we never even learn the protagonist's name.

Written in the best noir style, Drive opens, literally, in a pool of blood. The protagonist, whose name is never more than "Driver", spends part of his time as a stunt driver for the movies, and another part driving for criminals. As the book opens, his work for (the non-Hollywood) criminals has taken a terrible turn, and Driver finds his life completely unhinged. The rest of the book explores how Driver has come to be in this situation, and how he might get himself out. As the story unfolds across Arizona and southern California, Sallis's lean and powerful prose draws a stark image of a man on the fringe of society, in a dark world that most of us only see in the corners of our eyes as we drive quickly by.

From a writer's perspective, Drive is an excellent example of handling flashback. Common advice for writers is to begin "in media res"-in the middle of the action. Drive takes this to the extreme, beginning only a few days before the end, but telling a story that sweeps across a span of years. What does that mean for a story? Flashback, and lots of it. Probably two thirds of the book is flashback, and while that can be the kiss of death for a story in the hands of an amateur, Sallis handles it flawlessly. Despite the dramatic jumps backward and forward in time, a reader goes through the pages without feeling lost. Instead, the narrative comes together as a jigsaw puzzle, with the pieces falling into place one by one until the final, inevitable, piece completes the picture.

Cover to cover, Sallis puts on a demonstration of the style and structure of quality writing. Drive easily could be (and surely will be if it isn't already) used as a textbook in a creative writing class. It's that good.

Drive is an excellent book, written by a veteran author who really understands books and writing. Any fan of noir should not miss it, and anyone who enjoys a solid story wrapped in excellent prose should not miss it either. That, in my opinion, should include everyone.

A book that does not joke around. Enough back story to know the characters, enough action to keep you on your toes, and enough darkness to make you stay away from the west coast for life.

Driver, a stunt driver who falls into the business of getaway driving for robberies, is a bit smarter and more talented than he seems. Growing up learning the tricks of the street, he puts his knowledge of fighting, guns, and knives to use to fend off the mob when a burglary goes sour.

Not quirky, but pretty deep for such a short story. Very enjoyable. Really shows how small we all are in life as Driver realizes with each act of violence, nothing changes, the world keeps on living as it did and always will. Price is a bit high for such a small book, but worth rereading down the road. And down this road, hopefully you are not in Driver's shoes.

Where has James Sallis been all my life? This short, powerful, tremendously exciting novel is a perfect contrast to 99% of the mysteries we usually read. It is truly more than a crime story, an existential portrait of a criminal. It's 158 pages long, with large print, and I read it in 2 hours. But I won't soon forget it. It is a very modern version of THE STRANGER by Camus, tracking the downward spiral of a young man whose life of crime seems almost inevitable, preordained.

Sallis's clear, poetic voice makes me think about life, about the advantages I have that not everyone has. About how very easy it is for someone like "Driver" to take a wrong turn and end up in a hell on earth. And that is precisely where he is. What a concept--a crime novel that actually shows us the downside of crime. It is brief, pointed, ferocious, and absolutely brilliant.

Now I'm off to find Sallis's other books. This guy really knows the territory. Take a DRIVE and see if you agree with me.

At least twice in this short novel, the lead character, a stunt driver for movies who moonlights driving for heists, says "I drive. That's all I do." It's too bad that James Sallis didn't take that advice for his disjointed narrative. This could have a been a much better book if about 30 pages were removed. Would a character who stopped reading a book because he didn't understand a word (?!?) even WANT to be in a book where he had to take a chapter to discuss Jorge Luis Borges in the middle of the climax? Now, I like Borges as much as the next educated moron. I'm even old enough to interpolate my memory of the end of the film PERFORMANCE with it's cryptic "I AM BORGES". It doesn't make this the right (or even an interestingly wrong) choice. It's just sloppy craftsmanship that detracts from the plot! Halfway through this book, I was excited enough to put several books by James Sallis on my wishlist. They have now been demoted to "maybe check out of the library" status. I wish he'd had an editor smart enough to tell him to just shut up and drive. As it is, this is DRIVEL.

First, know that this novella is very short; less than 40,000 words. You can finish this book in a hurry.

That said, the book was pretty good. The timeline jumped around all over the place, but the author kept you with it. The action sequences were good. The prose was straightforward, though the author tried to introduce some new themes toward the end, related to Driver's introspection, that lost me.

The story is focused more on the characters' actions rather than their thoughts and motivations. Sallis put a lot of good scenes together in this book. I'm only giving it three stars because the story and characters deserved more time than this very short book gave them.

Moody and dark and every character--even the minor ones--are interesting. It's a fast, engaging read. While different than No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, if you like one you'll more than likely like the other.

Lots of people have been raving about this book; I read it, and I have to say I don't see what they love so much about it. The writing is distracting -- though Sallis dedicates the book to Ed McBain, Donald Westlake, and Lawrence Block, what those three men have that Sallis does not is the ability to write with enormous clarity. Their prose is irresistible in part because it's transparent -- it never needlessly calls attention to itself. Sallis' prose, by contrast, seems always to be jumping up and down saying, "Look at me! Aren't I precious?" Apart from being pretentious and distancing the reader from the events of the story, it doesn't fit the characters -- Driver would not know the word "demotic" any more than he knew "desuetude." And while I love Borges, it's not the case that every book is better if its characters make some reference to him -- whenever I see a writer namecheck Borges, I want to reenact the scene from "Annie Hall" where an exasperated Woody Allen silences a blowhard by forcing him to face the person about whose work he is pontificating...

My reaction appears to be atypical, so readers of this review should take it with a grain of salt -- but I feel someone has to call "Emperor's New Clothes" on this one...

Drive constantly switches between timeframes which becomes extremely annoying at times and not only hinders the smooth flow of the story but also the enjoyment. With Drive not written in chronological order you've got to read for a while before you know when each chapter is taking place. Even if written in timeframe order the story is pretty average at best.

In Drive the main character named Driver works as a stunt driver at LA movie shoots. He also makes a bit of cash on the side as a getaway driver for criminals but emphasises that all he does is drive. As you would expect amongst the criminal world, doing the honourable thing doesn't always apply and there comes a time when Driver's choice is either kill or be killed. Then Driver must reap vengeance on those who turned on him as wiping them out is the only way to ensure his own survival.

Much better novels of this type of genre can be found by other authors such as Richard Stark's (a.k.a Donald E Westlake)Parker series or James Pattinson's (Pattinson not Patterson) many novels.

Just home from seeing the movie DRIVE based on the book of the same name by James Sallis.
I enjoyed the book, and also the movie! Howard hadn't read book, but enjoyed the film.
As Jim told me - Hollywood added more violence to the film that he wrote in his very good book.
This has had very good views and came out while we were gone.
Can see why the director got the best director award at the Cann (sp?) Film Festival this year.
The photography, music and everything was very well done and went with the story!

While being a respectable 1940's style noir presentation, Mr. Sallis' words overpower his character's actions. Perhaps that's the curse of the short novel, which this is. The downside created the lack of an avenue to connect with the Driver as much as I should have.

Something else also bothered me about this book. I felt like I had read this story before. I was right. There's a book called The Company She Keeps by Georgia Durante. It's a true life story published in 1998 of a woman who drove getaway cars for the Mob who later became a stunt driver. The Company She Keeps is also 456 pages of true life experiences including domestic abuse and celebrity fame.

If you like reading about action, adventure and inspiration then The Company She Keeps by Georgia Durante is the book for you.

This is an excellent contemporary noir novel in which a character becomes caught up by circumstances largely beyond his control and must then struggle to somehow survive.

The main protagonist, Driver, is a stunt driver for the movies, and there's none better. But he also moonlights driving for robberies, and the thrill is principally in the driving itself rather than in the monetary rewards. He makes his position clear to anyone who wants to employ his services: "I drive. That's all I do. I don't sit in while you're planning the score or while you're running it down. You tell me where we start, where we're headed, where we'll be going afterwards, what time of day. I don't take part, I don't know anyone, I don't carry weapons. I drive."

Apart from his driving, Driver leads a minimalist existence, moving frequently, paying cash, leaving virtually no trail. But then, as must always happen in a book like this, things go wrong on a number of levels; Driver winds up alienating some very bad people and the game is on.

This is a beautifuly written book, lean and taut without a single wasted word. One hopes that the release of the movie made from the book will finally garner for it and for James Sallis the wider attention that both he and this book certainly deserve.

This was first exposure to this author. The writing was competent so I'll try another one but this story left me kind of flat. It features a protagonist known only as "Driver" who grew up poor and abandoned but liked fast cars and drove them well. He becomes a movie stuntman and moonlights driving getaway cars for a series of low-life thieves. Unfortunately, when a book is populated almost exclusively by uneducated, uninteresting deadbeats with no redeeming virtues it's hard to care what happens to them or the book. The late Charles Willeford did deadbeats well; Mr. Sallis doesn't.

Very rarely happens, but I just quit from reading this nonsense at half way through. It claims to be noir but it just pieces of fragmented sentences piled up on each other with no storyline, no plot, no distinguishable characters.

Following the plot of this disjointed, rambling, and almost unintelligible book is a challenge. It reads like Hemingway reincarnated as Tolstoy. It is not akin to the best of Hemingway - not a very high challenge anyway, and it's not as hard to follow as War and Peace, but almost. You're better off reading the worst of Tolstoy and, in a pinch, the best of Hemingway.