Driving in cars with homeless men

Kate Wisel

Book - 2019

Collection of linked stories about a group of women in working-class Boston.

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Subjects
Genres
Linked stories
Published
Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press [2019]
Language
English
Main Author
Kate Wisel (author)
Physical Description
x, 178 pages ; 23 cm
Awards
Drue Heinz Literature Prize
ISBN
9780822945680
  • Us : Hoops
  • Serena : Frankie ; She Says She Wants One Thing
  • Frankie : Cribs ; Stage Four
  • Raffa : Benny's Bed ; When I Call, You Answer
  • Serena : How I Dance ; Tell Us Things ; California
  • Natalya : English High ; Stop It
  • Frankie : Shelley Beneath Us ; Good Job
  • Serena : Trouble ; Sadie Escobar ; I'm Exaggerating
  • Raffa : What Counts ; Mick's Street ; Run For Your Life.
Review by Booklist Review

This debut collection of short stories traces the visible and more subtle scars of four women: Serena, Frankie, Raffa, and Nat. At different points in time, the women are roommates in various combinations, inseparable friends, wistfully distant, and everything in between. What binds them above all else are their experiences of violence. Against the vivid backdrop of early 2010s Boston, their antics and heartbreaks are kept inside tiny apartments, spill onto the streets, and wander into dirty dive bars. In a particularly memorable story, one of the women is trapped in a downtown office with an abuser of a boss during the horrific explosions of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Other pieces follow the women through the overdose of a loved one, the births of their children, and the starts and stops of more than one marriage. It's GIRLS without all the privilege and a fictionalized version of Lisa Taddeo's Three Women (2019), if the three women were friends. Bringing to life some of the smaller situations that have colored the #MeToo movement, this is fierce and emphatic.--Courtney Eathorne Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

Excerpt from Driving in Cars with Homeless Men Sunday and we're curled into the velvet couch we carried all the way from Goodwill ourselves then pushed into the corner of our old, enormous kitchen. When I brought this guy Andrew home the first time, I dragged him to my bedroom as Frankie flashed a thumbs-up from the couch. She tells me she likes him because he has natural blond hair, an office job downtown, and takes me to dinner like a real guy. We met in what Frankie calls "a picturesque way." This is the thing, ever since Frankie's mom died, she wants everything to go right. "How did it go?" Frankie says. I'm wearing a softball tee that got mixed up in the laundry and belongs to Frankie. Frankie's wearing a button-up sweater and a smile that belongs in toothpaste commercials.             "He took me out to Chinese," I start. I pass back the gravity bong we fashioned from a Pepsi bottle. Her cheekbones flush with the Rosacea that makes her look possessed by insider information, like someone's got their mouth to her ear.             "Details," she says.               It goes more or less like this: Andrew reached his hands across the booth just as I was about to say, "I have an early dentist appointment in the morning." The waiter moved to our table with the purposefulness of a surgeon and filled our water, shard-like ice cubes cracking in the silence. Then the food came, platter-by-platter, clouds of steam swooshing into our faces. I filled my plate and drowned my rice in duck sauce.             "You must have been hungry," he said as I scraped the last grains with my fork. "Do you want to order dessert?" He leaned forward with the enthusiasm of a talk show host. I ordered another Blue Moon. By the time he got the check I was almost laying down, corpse-like in the booth. I stared at him sleepily, exaggerating my blink like a housecat. I contemplated burping but foresaw him refusing the check and thought better of it. Instead, I reached across the table and crushed a fortune cookie in my fist. I straightened up to pick the fortune from the remains, which read: You need only to understand that it is not necessary it understand but only enjoy.             He insisted on walking me home. He tried again to hold my hand as we moved under streetlights that lit up our faces like morons at a spelling bee in which we knew none of the words. I let him grasp my forefinger, which only made me blush. "Careful," he said, as I kicked my way through the broken glass of me and Frankie's block, jellied condoms lying shriveled in the cracks. We passed the methadone clinic by Packard's Corner where beyond the parking lot the registered sex offenders live in tighter and tighter clusters of red dots like the Clap. I was stumbling drunk, and hoped he would leave me at my front door without asking to come inside.             When he did, I said, in my best robot, "I do not have air conditioning." We stood in the envelope-littered foyer as he watched me stab keys into my lock. When the door swung open I held my hand on the knob while he waved, tripping down a step as he reversed his way out of my sight.   Excerpted from Driving in Cars with Homeless Men: Stories by Kate Wisel All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.