Driving the Heart and Other Stories Book

"It is too late for me. I already have several chins, and if I were to die tomorrow, only about four people would notice and none of them, except my mother, would be women...Jason Brown's fictional debut Driving The Heart, depicts the dark side of small-town life. This is an America of dysfunctional families, AA meetings and hospital wards, each of the 13 stories filled with quiet despair. Two men drive the organs of the recently deceased to their transplant recipients; a coroner coldly dispenses post mortem and suicide facts and tells relatives of sudden deaths; a group of alcoholics plot to escape the basement detox centre in which they are incarcerated; a schoolboy sneaks into a neighbours house at night to listen to her breathing.Brown's style is dry and sardonic with monologues worthy of Bukowski: "We sat around the kitchen table drinking slowly, not saying much, sinking into a smaller life" or "I live alone in a one-story house at the end of a long street and it has been the nature of my moodiness after work to walk through the empty bedrooms at night..." In a refreshing change from the usual settings, Brown sets most of the tales in his east coast homeland of Maine, most in South Portland or the nearby coastal islands. The streets become familiar, filled with the inhabitants overwhelming sadness and disappointment. Human life is fragile--threatened by mental breakdown, car crashes, heroin addiction, cancer and loneliness. The characters develop everyday rituals to get by, which when told in Brown's dispassionate style take on a powerful poignancy--from a brain tumour patient obsessively studying shrews to a schizophrenic suburban mother locked in a room reading ancient history.Driving The Heart will leave you shell-shocked. Alongside Rick Moody, Jason Brown is one of most exciting new American suburban writers. --Sarah ChampionRead More