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The Spark and the Drive: A Novel Kindle Edition

3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 29 ratings

By an award-winning writer of short fiction, a devastatingly powerful debut novel of hero-worship, first love, and betrayalJustin Bailey is seventeen when he arrives at the shop of legendary muscle car mechanic Nick Campbell. Anguished and out of place among the students at his rural Connecticut high school, Justin finds in Nick, his captivating wife Mary Ann, and their world of miraculous machines the sense of family he has struggled to find at home.But when Nick and Mary Ann’s lives are struck by tragedy, Justin’s own world is upended. Suddenly Nick, once celebrated for his mechanical genius, has lost his touch. Mary Ann, once tender and compassionate to her husband, has turned distant. As Justin tries to support his suffering mentor, he finds himself drawn toward the man’s grieving wife. Torn apart by feelings of betrayal, Justin must choose between the man he admires more than his own father and the woman he yearns for.A poignant and fiercely original debut, with moments of fast-paced suspense, Wayne Harrison's The Spark and The Drive is the unforgettable story of a young man forced to make an impossible decision—no matter the consequences.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Ever since Harrison earned his MFA at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop program, his stories have appeared in leading literary publications, including McSweeney’s. Now stepping onto a larger stage with a first novel based on a story published in the Atlantic, Harrison peers inside the little-seen world of muscle-car shops in this tale about hero worship, betrayal, and auto mechanics. Just out of high school, aspiring mechanic Justin Bailey falls under the spell of legendary car-shop owner Nick Campbell and his attractive wife, Mary Ann, and is soon lured into becoming Campbell’s apprentice. Yet as Campbell is about to strike gold with an offer to run a chain of Miami-based high-performance auto shops, the couple’s infant son dies, and Campbell’s genius begins to fade, leaving Justin torn with disillusionment and drawn into an affair with Mary Ann. Harrison’s characters are fully fleshed, and his prose masterfully polished, making for a thoroughly engrossing read and a strikingly original debut novel. --Carl Hays

Review

A terrifically engaging story... elaborately tricked out with eye-catching accessories, from drag racing to drug dealing to rape and murder and a host of other violations.... Like Richard Russo, Phillipp Meyer and Mark Slouka, Harrison understands the rusting body of American labor. These are grease-smeared pages, full of the sounds of revving motors and the anxieties of narrowly educated men in a fading field.... Whether or not you love cars, Harrison speaks that special dialect so fluently that anyone with a heart can hear it. In this end, this isn't so much a novel about the great vehicles we lost as it is about the antique ideals we keep rebuilding and polishing. - The Washington Post

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:
    3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 29 ratings

About the author

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Wayne Harrison
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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

3.6 out of 5 stars
29 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2014
    Excellent for someone who was young at the time of muscle cars and understands how the people of the time viewed life.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2014
    From the review I didn't think it would be about having sex with th bosses wife.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2014
    I 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.
    10 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2014
    The book and its delivery were both excellent.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2019
    Amazon Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
    Gritty 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, 2018
    Amazon Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
    I 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.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2015
    Amazon Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
    Justin 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.
    2 people found this helpful
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