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storytimed 's review for:
Your Driver Is Waiting
by Priya Guns
Your Driver Is Waiting is set in a placeless city where protests wrack the area, the economy keeps getting worse, and the smug liberal rich people use performative actions to hide their fundamental bigotry
So kind of like our world now!
But like.......... the points that the author tries to make are so confused
Damani, our protagonist, is a gig app driver who falls in lust with the rich, white, liberal #Ally Jolene
She both fetishizes Jolene's wealth and whiteness and is contempt of it in equal measure
Which I think is really interesting! Except their dynamic never really rises above Damani being obsessed and the two of them hooking up
Like there doesn't seem to be an actual like... emotional connection there
Guns satirizes and seems to be dismissive of the protests with their thousand signs and issues as well as the fundraisers that Jolene holds
Which like... it's such a Leftier Than Thou vibe where the alternative she holds up as Good, Actually is that the gig drivers of the city go on strike and demand that the app they use turn over the means of production to a collective council of drivers
Which ok! I would like the rideshare app to be nonprofit and run by a collective of drivers! I see that and I'm like, so it's like RideAustin?
But no, they want Uber to hand the Uber app over, which like. OK... and how do you expect to enforce this... how do you expect this to run?
I get that it's not supposed to be 100% realistic but if you're going to make a political argument then please have it be coherent??
All throughout the book characters make decisions that do seem kind of like. Not the most well thought-out
Like, Damani brings Jolene to the punk warehouse she and her friends hang out at, where her bff Shereef and his girlfriend are discussing possible actions to take against the rideshare company
Jolene, a nonprofit fundraiser, offers to help; she is dismissed immediately bc they are suspicious of how much of a rich white girl she is
Which is fine! But also like, if you're planning a strike, do you not perhaps need... a strike fund??
Shereef's gf Stephanie makes a joke about burning down the building. Jolene, who at this point is mega-high (everyone is extremely greened out during this moment) and paranoid, panics and says "you're not going to actually burn down the building, are you?"
Shereef gets offended that she would ask such a thing, but (this is important) NOBODY AT THE TABLE IS WILLING TO DENY IT
Instead they kind of just say all these edgy koans about how sometimes violence is necessary, but isn't it interesting that you assume we will be violent
And I am like. OK but why are you being so deliberately and needlessly obscure in this moment
And then Jolene does something unforgivable and calls the cops to report the rideshare strike movement, which gets the warehouse raided and Shereef arrested
It's horrible. But it's also... like, Damani, what did you expect.......
The rest of the book is about Damani melting down, stalking Jolene and eventually driving her car into a police barricade in a symbolic but pretty useless gesture
My only reaction was "ok, I guess"
Sorely disappointed by this book. Might be the middle class values in me but like. Also I think these are the worst kinds of leftists
I think Your Driver Is Waiting suffers from the placelessness
Priya Guns is actually from the UK! But so much of the city she describes feels American
Like in the UK actually Damani and her family can get council housing
And in the US a nice white liberal like Jolene would not be clutching pearls over the word "communism"
So the politics ultimately feel confused... reacting more to an idea of Twitter discourse than anything actually grounded in irl matters
GUNS: Before writing this novel, I probably took three ride-share drives. I've only downloaded the app about a couple months ago. But I mean, in terms of taking taxis - I mean, I've always taken taxis. I don't really drive. I started taking lessons while I was writing the book so I could understand what it feels like to drive stick and to actually drive on the road.
LMAO