Drives Like a Dream

by Porter Shreve

Book Overview

The New York Times called Porter Shreve's first novel, The Obituary Writer, "an involving and sneakily touching story whose twists feel less like the conventions of a genre than the convolutions of a heart--any heart." Newsday hailed the book as "a substantial achievement," and Tim O'Brien described it as "taut, compelling, and moving . . . beautifully written, engrossing from start to finish." Shining with the same heart and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618711929
• ISBN13: 9780618711925
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.7" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Whether in Egypt or America, these people are true

My life has been full of circuitous routes and my route to this book was no different. In the late 1980s my family lived in Cairo. My husband had a placement there. So recently my daughter sent me a link to an article by Porter Shreve called "Derelicts in the Sinai," about his trip to Egypt around the time we would have lived there. I was so struck by the honesty of the piece and the vividness of the descriptions that I followed links to Mr. Shreve's books. This one interested me more since I'm a mother of grown children. Once again this author has a gift for understanding human dynamics. I thought the relationship between Lydia and Jessica was very true and the whole family seemed like people I've known all my life. The book is also humorous, and sometimes I would be surprised when a funny moment turned serious or vice versa: for example, when Lydia's car breaks down on her ex-husband's wedding day and her kids have to come rescue her. The author shifts gears, pun intended, from the comic to the serious with great skill. And the overall experience was a very pleasant one.

New and familiar

An excellent book by an excellent writer. Shreve tries something new every time out. I heard him read at the U of M a couple weeks ago from a new novel. I don't know when it comes out, but I can relate to the title: When the White House was Ours. It's from the p.o.v. of a 12 yr old boy. Quite a leap from the 60 yr old heroine of Drives Like a Dream. But theres something holding all the books together, humor, affection for people, readability. Check out The Obituary Writer, too. It's about a greenhorn reporter who gets snared in a black widow's web.

My mom said "read this" and she was right again!

My mom gave me this book for Mother's Day. She's fun like that. She said that Lydia and Jessica, the mother and daughter in the book, reminded her of our relationship. Hm. So I read the book and was surprised to see that a male writer could capture a mother and daughter relationship so well. It was pretty amazing: the way they fought, the passive-aggresive stuff, the resentment, communication, and the love too. It's complicated and delicate and Shreve obviously understands that. The book turns out to be a family novel with quiet and powerful emotion. There's humor, too - loved the Spiveys! - and it all adds up to something that kind of hums. I'm passing this book on to my best friend, who has an even more complicated relationship with her mother.

A novel of Detroit and beyond

I picked up this book because it's set near where I live. The main character's house is only a couple miles from me. I'm also a mom of a certain age, much of my family has worked in the car industry, and it's my turn to pick a title for our book club. But when I finished Drives Like a Dream I wouldn't have cared if the book had been set in Alaska or Bulgaria and had nothing to do with cars -- I still would have connected with it just as well. This is a novel about character, and if you're the kind of reader with a compassion for people, accepting all their flaws, this is your kind of book. What I thought was particularly great was the way the author managed to be both funny and sad at the same time. I felt both emotions, often simultaneously, when I read the book, which must be the reason why it seemed so true. My heart went out for Lydia and her obsession to keep her kids nearby, but she's also hilarious -- often accidentally -- in the extremes she goes to. She meets this horrible car-designing guy named Norm and suffers through what has to be one of the worst dates in the history of fiction. But after great trials she somehow manages to triumph and make peace with her kids. The last lines of the book -- I won't give them away -- could be read as either a new beginning for Lydia or a recognition that a chapter of her life has come to an end. Full of hope but with some despair, too. Like life.