Your Driver Is Waiting

Description

“A ferocious new voice. A fierce and immersive debut.” —Weike Wang, author of Joan is Okay and Chemistry

In this electrifyingly fierce and funny social satire— a gender-flipped reboot of the iconic 1970’s film Taxi Driver—a ride share driver is barely holding it together on the hunt for love, dignity and financial security…until she decides she’s done waiting.

Damani is tired. Her father just died on the job at a fast food joint, and now she lives paycheck to paycheck in a basement, caring for her mom and driving for an app that is constantly cutting her take. The city is roiling in protests—everybody’s in solidarity with somebody—but while she keeps hearing that they’re fighting for change on behalf of people like her, she literally can’t afford to pay attention.

Then she gives a ride to Jolene (5 stars, obviously). Jolene seems like she could be the perfect girlfriend—attentive, attractive, an ally—and their chemistry is off the charts. Jolene’s done the reading, she goes to every protest, and she says all the right things. So maybe Damani can look past the one thing that’s holding her back: She’s never dated anyone with money before, not to mention a white girl with money. But just as their romance intensifies and Damani finally lets her guard down, Jolene does something unforgivable, setting off an explosive chain of events.

A wild, one-sitting read brimming with dark comedy, and piercing social commentary and announcing Priya Guns’ feverishly original voice, Your Driver Is Waiting is a crackling send-up of our culture of modern alienation.Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Nylon, Bustle, & Autostraddle
Featured in Quill & Quire’s 2023 Spring Preview: Fiction and Poetry

One of
Good Housekeeping’s “15 Most-Anticipated Books of 2023”
Buzzfeed’s “24 Of The Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books Of 2023”
Buzzfeed News’ “15 Books Coming Out This Winter You Should Read”
Lit Hub’s  “Most Anticipated Books of 2023”
Rolling Stone’s “Best Queer Novels Out Now”
Autostraddle’s “65 of the Best Queer Books of 2023”
Shondaland’s “Best Debut Novels of 2023, From Queer Fantasies to War Epics”
Electric Lit’s “8 Coming of Age Novels About Immigrants and First Generation Americans”

“Your Driver Is Waiting is a perfect gut punch of a novel. This is my favorite kind of writing, full of love and real friendship and frustrations boiled over and the urge to burn everything down. Priya Guns is phenomenal here, her writing is laser-focused and hilarious and full of aching need. This is a hard-hitting masterpiece. I devoured it.”
—Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth and Mostly Dead Things

“A compelling character study with an electrifying ending, Your Driver Is Waiting offers a potent social critique overflowing with love, despair, passion, and rage. Priya Guns brings to the page a voice infused with both bravado and vulnerability in this madcap story you won’t want to put down.”
—Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch

“A ferocious new voice. A fierce and immersive debut. A story that made me rock back and forth with awe. Priya Guns’s voice blazes on the page with humor, heart, and a fortitude that is inspiring to behold. There’s no doubt who’s in the drivers’ seat. I was just grateful to be along for the ride.”
—Weike Wang, author of Joan is Okay and Chemistry

“From page one, this novel had its hands around my neck. A voice that is somehow simultaneously fearless and intensely vulnerable. The only thing slicker than her narrator’s driving is Guns’s ability to deliver sharp social commentary that will make you unsure of whether you want to laugh or cry. Your Driver Is Waiting is an unhinged joyride—whether you buckle up or not, you’re sure to be gripping the edge of your seat.”
—Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of Pizza Girl

“In powerful and unrelenting prose, Priya Guns’s Your Driver Is Waiting has accomplished a nearly impossible feat: scathing social commentary about the inequalities of modern day America in a propulsive, funny, and tender story about love, community, and loss. Damani is an unforgettable heroine that now lives rent-free in my heart. Welcome her into yours.”
—Cleyvis Natera, author of Neruda on the Park

“Your Driver Is Waiting captures something vital about our contemporary moment, about the millions of lives spent on the margins. It’s deft enough to navigate questions of class, precarity, race and economic displacement, while managing to be so full of hope, full of fight, full of heart.”
—Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass

“Your Driver Is Waiting is an ambitious project, taking on performative ally-ship, racial discrimination and the class system all at once. . . . While the parallels to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver are clear, it would be a mistake to call Your Driver Is Waiting a gender-flipped reboot of the film. Doing so . . . would obscure the novel’s greatest strength—a ferocity of voice that belongs to Guns alone.”
—The New York Times

“Your Driver Is Waiting houses the radical politics found in the work of Yara Rodrigues Fowler and Meena Kandasamy, yet the brazenness and forthrightness of her prose puts [Priya] Guns in a space of her own. . . . [A] propulsive novel about social precarity and solidarity.”
—The Guardian

“[A] propulsive debut novel. . . . [and] remarkable piece of writing. . . . there’s a fast-paced narrative with bite and, above all, Damani—smart, funny, brave and feral—a character not soon forgotten.”
—Toronto Star

“Travis Bickle, meet Toni Morrison, in a socially probing, fiercely fun debut novel. . . . From the book’s opening pages, our protagonist’s life of not-so-quiet desperation is driven home by her creator’s powerful prose. . . . It’s rare for a writer to marry such deep social consciousness with a comic, sultry romance, rarer still to pull that off in a way that satisfies and provokes the reader.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Your Driver Is Waiting . . . [is] a punchy page-turner imbued with dark comedy and trenchant social commentary. . . . [A] dark, fierce, funny novel.”
—The Seattle Times

“Guns’ sharp and bonkers debut reimagines Taxi Driver for the Uber era…This has plenty of bite.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A queer feminist retelling of the 1970’s film Taxi Driver, this one had me laughing loud enough to draw looks on the subway, and that takes some doing. It’s a crackling social commentary on the social justice movements of our time, the gig economy, performative wokeness and who gets to speak on behalf of the disadvantaged. It’s a fast-paced read that begs to be devoured.”
—Good Housekeeping

“Six months after her father’s death, ride-share driver Damani endures inconsistent hours, low pay, and disastrous interactions to support herself and her mother…It’s Damani’s ferocious heart that makes Guns’ debut impossible to put down; Damani’s a lover and a fighter, start to finish.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“Engrossing with a strong narrative voice, this is a book that will grab you and never let go.”
—Buzzfeed
 
“A biting and uproarious take on the gig economy, capitalism, and race, this is the kind of book you read in one sitting—preferably not in an Uber.”
—Buzzfeed News

“[A] contemporary, gender-flipped, queer riff on the movie Taxi Driver.”
—Quill & Quire

“Honestly, you had me at “queer feminist reboot of the iconic 1970s film Taxi Driver.”
—Lit Hub

“Guns covers the exhilarating intoxicating feelings of a first-crush so well that you begin to forget, alongside Damani, the rising stakes of everything around her. Read this if you like a propulsive ending and if you love a character-driven book that confronts performative wokeness, systemic racism, money, and class.”
—Electric LitPRIYA GUNS is an actor and writer previously published in short story anthologies, gal-dem, and Spring magazine, and anonymously in The Guardian. Born in Jaffna and raised in Tkaronto, she graduated from York University and studied Creative Writing at Kingston University in the U.K. No matter where she is, she is Scarborough at heart. Your Driver Is Waiting is her debut novel.US

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