The Drive by Tyler Keevil

The Drive by Tyler Keevil

On a hot August day at Vancouver airport, a distraught young man wanders into the Odyssey car rental agency, carrying a backpack full of beer and boxer shorts. Trevor Kelvin is in the midst of a serious crisis - at least in his own mind. His all-too-comfortable existence as a wannabe filmmaker has been disrupted by a single phone call from his Czech girlfriend.

In an attempt to get over her, and get his mojo back, Trevor rents a Dodge Neon and blazes down Highway 99, heading for California, equipped only with a semi-automatic pistol and his trusty plastic visor, and with a flea-ridden cat as his companion. As the drugs and the heartbreak kick in, his journey is increasingly fraught with peril, until the question is no longer whether Trevor will get over his girlfriend's infidelity but whether he'll get out alive.

An odyssey of Homeric proportions, told with a searing clarity reminiscent of Willy Vlautin or Patrick de Witt, The Drive has all the adventure and surrealism of Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but overlaid with heartfelt yearning and hope.

Keevil, Tyler: - Tyler Keevil was born in Edmonton, grew up in Vancouver, and in his mid-twenties moved to Wales. He is the author of three novels--Fireball, The Drive and No Good Brother--and his short fiction has appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies in Britain, Canada and the United States. He has received a number of awards for his writing, including the Missouri Review> Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize, the Wales Book of the Year People's Prize and the Writers' Trust of Canada / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize (for Sealskin, in this collection). Among other things, he has worked as a tree planter, ice barge deckhand and shipyard labourer; he is now a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Cardiff University.