by David Bowman

isbn: 0140237240
subject: Fiction and Literature
finished: 8/1/2001

I finally got around to reading this book, which I made a mental note to pick up over three years ago after reading and enjoying Bowman's second book, Bunny Modern. Let the Dog Drive is a love story about a young man who meets an older woman while hitchhiking and becomes not only infatuated with her, but pulled into the strange world that surrounds her and her family. Sylvia is something of a free spirit, but trapped in a marriage to an odd and cruel man. In general the book is engaging, interesting, and funny, but at times I felt that Bowman was trying too hard to be offbeat or that he just wasn't succeeding at making a point. In other words, Let the Dog Drive has some of the negative characteristics that I associate with first novels, but it's obviously the first novel of a talented author, and it's a pretty good one.