Drive

Author: James Sallis

Genre: Neo Noir

Rating: A-

"Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake."

It's kind of a rule of book-to-movie adaptations that the book is always better than the movie.  Like every rule, there are always the exceptions to it, and James Sallis' Drive, which inspired the movie of the same name, is one of those exceptions.  That's not to say that this book isn't good, great even, just that I think the movie was better.

Drive is about a man, Driver, who works as a stunt driver during the day and a get-away car driver during the night.  Life is good, albeit a bit unstable, until he takes a job that goes horribly wrong.  During it Driver is double crossed, and following it he decides to go after those who did the double crossing and are out to kill him.  The story is told in an anachronistic fashion, going back and forth between Driver's actions following the double crossing and his life leading up to it, and follows not only Driver but to a lesser extent the lives of those around him.

In a lot of ways, the plot of Drive the book is a lot better than the plot of Drive the movie.  It isn't a love story, it isn't an action story, it's just a nitty gritty, dark book.  It isn't trying to appeal to this vast audience, which is in my opinion what makes it a real gem.  It's written not for the money that it can make or the attention that it can draw, but for the pure pleasure of writing. We get the background of the characters - Driver, Nico, Benie Rose.  We get to understand why things happen the way they happen.

What doesn't work as well is the anachronistic ordering of the book, and the way that it appears to be a bit unsure of the tense that it wants to be written in.  There were a few points when I wasn't sure if the book was being written in present or past tense or both, in a way that was really rather aggravating.  The way that it switched around with the narration and point of view was also aggravating - a lot of the time it wasn't bad, but there were times when it took me a bit to figure out just whose part of the story was being told.  I don't mind having to think when I'm reading - I enjoy it really - but I do dislike being deliberately confused by the author.  It's one thing when it's a misleading plot, it's another thing when it's more the case of sloppy writing and a lack of personal pronouns.  When your characters are primarily male then "he" doesn't cut it as an identifier.

I did really like the way this book ended, however, and the plot differences between it and and the movie.  The movie really tries to be a love story and sets up a lot of Driver's actions as the result of this.  In the book, however, the relationship between him and the girl is far from being the focus, which I liked.  Love stories are great, but not everything is a love story, which Sallis seems to get.