Review: 'Your Driver Is Waiting,' by Priya Guns

Damani is a driver running on empty and veering out of control. She works day and night for an exploitative ride-share app and tries to make ends meet on her low and erratic paychecks. Constantly exhausted, with little time to recharge between shifts, she is also raw with grief after the recent death of her father. At home, she cares for her sick, sad and scared mother. If there is a brighter future out there, she is yet to find it.

At the outset, and on the surface, Priya Guns' debut seems offputtingly bleak. In actual fact, "Your Driver Is Waiting" turns out to be a punchy page-turner imbued with dark comedy and trenchant social commentary. Sri Lankan-born Guns sets her drama in a place engulfed by civil unrest, a city — unnamed — that "thrived on the dreams of the smothered." In contrast, Guns' protagonist is named. More than that, she is fully fleshed out and emerges as a dynamic force to be reckoned with.

Damani decompresses by hanging out at the Doo Wop club with Shereef, a mechanic by day and a fellow driver by night, and Stephanie, a teacher. At work, most of Damani's passengers are obnoxious but some help lighten her load by tipping well and treating her with respect. A handful — "Soul-spillers, secret-blurters, conspiracy theorists gone wild" — turn her car into a mobile confessional and take her mind off her problems by sharing their own with her.

One day, a woman gets into Damani's car and overturns her world. Unlike Damani, Jolene is a white activist who is financially propped up by her wealthy parents. Despite their differences, the pair click and a passionate, giddy romance develops. After a while, Damani starts to have reservations ("she was the sun. Perfect at a distance, but up close, she could hurt my skin") but continues to follow her heart — that is, until an altercation exposes true colors and unleashes chaos.

Guns' novel takes its time to get going. There is little in the way of plot, and much of the narrative involves Damani driving around and effectively going nowhere. Along the way, she delivers the odd clunky line: cigarettes and coffee "made love in my mouth like it was New Year's Eve and they had no resolutions." Also, although there are echoes with Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," they are too distant to be able to label the book a gender-flipped rewrite.

"Your Driver Is Waiting" roars to life when Damani becomes more of an active participator making her feelings known and her singular voice heard. She is a fascinating creation: a woman with attitude and an agenda, who displays her vulnerability but also shows her tough side and is unafraid of using the titanium baseball bat in her trunk and the switchblade in her pocket. "When I go fast, I am invincible," she tells us. Strap yourself in and enjoy the ride.

Malcolm Forbes has written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Your Driver Is Waiting

By: Priya Guns.

Publisher: Doubleday, 320 pages, $26.