Damani Krishnathan is a driver for RideShare in an unnamed city. She’s barely holding it together. Her father has recently died, and she lives at home with her mother, who is not holding it together. She has a group of friends that she spends slivers of time with when she’s not working or taking care of her mother. An encampment of immigrants just outside the city is becoming an ever-increasing addition to the social unease and malaise that is tightening its grip. This is a good day.
It picks up when Damani bumps into a pedestrian with her car. The pedestrian (Jolene) is not hurt, but she is beautiful (and rich and white), and Damani quickly realizes she is falling in love.
Your Driver is Waiting is a fast, compulsive read, propelled by Damani’s first-person narration. Her outlook is pragmatic and her voice is hilarious. Guns, who took the movie Taxi Driver as a loose inspiration, carefully crafts a Kafkaesque vision of capitalism as an almost Lovecraftian presence, a formless monster draining the life out of those in its grip, which is pretty much everyone. For a few shining moments, Damani and Jolene look like a match made in heaven even if they reside in a current day dystopian hell. But hell hath a bucketload of fury, more than enough to engulf a city.
Your Driver is Waiting makes great writing feel easy. In one sentence, Guns can be sweet, funny, harrowing and insightful. She creates a city and Damani’s friends with the sort of specificity that feels real, while the anonymity of the setting lends the story a surreal sensibility. You’ll laugh a lot while reading this, then develop real feelings for the characters. (I did.) When you sleep, you’ll have nightmares. (I did.) Rest assured you’ll read this as fast as possible, and that after, you’ll find yourself seeing the world through Damani’s eyes. You’ll feel better for gift of Guns, and worse for the world. You might be tempted to do something. It’s unlikely you’ll want to drive – or call – a ride-sharing service.
Unsurprisingly, Priya Guns is even more entertaining than Damani. Hear her voice by following this link to the podcast file, or fasten your seatbelt and listen in place. RideShare requires all passengers observe the rules of safety, even if you are certainly, eternally, unsafe.
Narrative Species 