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The Spark and the Drive: A Novel Kindle Edition
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSt. Martin's Press
- Publication dateJuly 15, 2014
- File size666 KB
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
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About the Author
WAYNE HARRISON is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop whose stories have appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney's, Ploughshares, and Narrative Magazine. One of his stories was selected for Best American Short Stories 2010 and his fiction has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered. His short story collection Wrench was a finalist for the Iowa Book Award, the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award, and the Spokane Prize. He teaches writing at Oregon State University.
Product details
- ASIN : B00HY09WXK
- Publisher : St. Martin's Press (July 15, 2014)
- Publication date : July 15, 2014
- Language : English
- File size : 666 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 286 pages
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Before working as a corrections officer in Rutland, Vermont, Wayne Harrison was an auto mechanic for six years in Waterbury, Connecticut. A first-generation college student, he began in his mid twenties as a criminal justice major before getting turned on to creative writing. He later received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
His fiction has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. His short stories appear in Best American Short Stories 2010, The Atlantic, Narrative Magazine, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, The Sun, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, FiveChapters, New Letters and other magazines. One story was Notable in Best American 2009 and one received special mention in Pushcart Prizes 2012. His fiction has earned a Maytag fellowship, an Oregon Literary fellowship and a Fishtrap Writing Fellowship. He teaches writing at Oregon State University.
Customer reviews
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- Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2014Excellent for someone who was young at the time of muscle cars and understands how the people of the time viewed life.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2014From the review I didn't think it would be about having sex with th bosses wife.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2014I loved the short story upon which this novel was based. When I read it, I immediately flagged Harrison as a writer whose career I wanted to follow. While he clearly has a lot of talent, I can't say I entirely enjoyed this novel. The plot veers off in so many directions from the original great premise of a young mechanic who finds work in the garage of a man he admires and then develops a huge crush on the man's wife. From there, we get sidetracks into a gang of high school boys who do James Dean/East of Eden-like drag racing, a car-thieving scheme and closing chapters (I won't divulge spoilers) that go down the path of familiar scenes we've seen all too often in TV movies (not to mention along the way we also get a gay father who came out of the closet halfway through his marriage, and a mother who became an alcoholic because of it). Through all it, my biggest problem is that the main character Justin does some very weird things that don't feel psychologically true. If he views the owner of the garage as his mentor, I don't fully understand why he would betray him as he does, and how he can carry on the way he does when he's doing it. Now, because I am married to a therapist, I have learned people can react in all kinds of surprisingly different ways to the same set of circumstances, but if a character does act in a wholly unexpected way, it would be great if you got inside their head enough to understand why they're doing the things they are. And for me, there just wasn't enough of that. And Justin's emotions, when we do get them, just aren't that varied. He stays friends with Nick his mentor, and never seems to have any guilt about betraying him. And the one justification he finds for doing makes he seem thick headed and totally lacking in compassion, The writing here at the voice and sentence structure level is very good -- but unless you're a mechanic there are sections of description that are impossible to understand. And then the writing turns densely lyrical whenever Justin gets really turned on by Maryann's body (Nick's wife). Maybe I'm jaundiced, but a teenage boy getting aroused by a pretty older woman doesn't seem that extraordinary to me to warrant so many passages of flights of fancy prose. Harrison is still on my watch list, and I look forward to reading what he does next, but this one was a bit of a letdown for me.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2014The book and its delivery were both excellent.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2019Gritty Waterbury Connecticut in the summer of '85. What if Gatsby and Daisy were working class, married to each other, in love and the world was their oyster; and Nick Carraway was a 17 years old who finally found a home in their circle. And it all goes horribly wrong. That sort of dreamy tragedy is how the beginning of the story felt to me. This is a perfect book club choice.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2018I only kind of liked this book. I actually finished it, so that's something!
It's a decent story about a boy working as a car mechanic hooking up with an older woman who pretty much toys with him and ends up not committing. That pretty much sums up the book. It wasn't much of a story but like I said, I finished it, so that's a plus. I wouldn't recommend it, as the payoff at the end simply doesn't exist. It's not a satisfying ending and I didn't care for it at all.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2015Justin Bailey, the protagonist of "The Spark and the Drive," is something of a misfit. Having transferred from a private school during adolescence to an agricultural-oriented high school, he's now found work he genuinely enjoys as a mechanic in a shop in Waterbury, Conn. Perfecting his craft alongside the motley crew of other mechanics, he finds the camaraderie he longed for but failed to find in high school. His boss, Nick, is an enigma waiting to happen, but his wizardry with the insides of car engines is impressive, although for some unknown reason, more customers are returning with complaints about repair jobs. Justin is drawn to Nick's wife, Mary Anne, who also works at the shop. Justin's home life, however, is less than stimulating, as his father moved out due to divorce and a reason that makes Justin ashamed of his dad. Now he cares for his little sister, April, when he's home and keeps an eye on his mother's increasing drinking (she has romantic troubles, too).
Unsurprisingly, Justin discovers that things are rocky in Nick's and Mary Anne's marriage, partly due to the fact that their only son succumbed to SID, and that Mary Anne wants Nick to move back to their former home. There's also the prospect of Nick's relocating to Florida, a potential detour into crime for Justin and his co-workers, and the kind of trouble you'd expect in a book where there's an attractive woman and two men who care for her.
If you're reading this review and thinking something along the lines of that you couldn't possibly enjoy a book set in the world of auto mechanics because you're not into that kind of thing, I would urge you to give this book a chance anyway. It's extremely well-written, with a welcome dollop of humor, and captures both the complex feelings one can have at a young age for a mentor and the love one can have for one's vocation.