She Drove Without Stopping
SKU:
1364
$15.00
$15.00
per item
Paperback, 390 pages, 5.5 x 8.5", 1993, 2012, 0-929701-36-4
Twenty-year-old Jane Turner sets off on a cross-country adventure, and by the end of her reckless, risky year on the road she's been in love, in danger, in jail, and at last in control again of her own life. Jaimy Gordon, whose earlier books have earned her reputation as a brilliant stylist, here tells the story of a very young, very bold American woman deciding what she wants, and along the way reveals secrets of a special and particularly American woman.
"This may be the novel that women have been trying to write for the last thirty years... [She Drove Without Stopping] offers a wider variety of pleasures than just about any so-called 'women's' classic one can think of. This is a feminist monster from the id: omnivorous, roaring and wildly colorful." — John Domini, American Book Review
"Jane Turner, carfare in her palm and defiance in her heart, is one of the ablest heroines ever to track the American landscape." — Jayne Anne Phillips
"I don't believe there is any protagonist in contemporary fiction quite like Jane. ...She Drove Without Stopping is a wondrous and important book." —John Hawkes
"I haven't heard a voice like Jaimy Gordon's anywhere. ... [This] is a unique and valuable book." — Rosellen Brown
Twenty-year-old Jane Turner sets off on a cross-country adventure, and by the end of her reckless, risky year on the road she's been in love, in danger, in jail, and at last in control again of her own life. Jaimy Gordon, whose earlier books have earned her reputation as a brilliant stylist, here tells the story of a very young, very bold American woman deciding what she wants, and along the way reveals secrets of a special and particularly American woman.
"This may be the novel that women have been trying to write for the last thirty years... [She Drove Without Stopping] offers a wider variety of pleasures than just about any so-called 'women's' classic one can think of. This is a feminist monster from the id: omnivorous, roaring and wildly colorful." — John Domini, American Book Review
"Jane Turner, carfare in her palm and defiance in her heart, is one of the ablest heroines ever to track the American landscape." — Jayne Anne Phillips
"I don't believe there is any protagonist in contemporary fiction quite like Jane. ...She Drove Without Stopping is a wondrous and important book." —John Hawkes
"I haven't heard a voice like Jaimy Gordon's anywhere. ... [This] is a unique and valuable book." — Rosellen Brown
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"The dream of perpetual motion is what animates this sexy and lyrical novel." — Voice Literary Supplement
"Raucous, sexy, thrilling, urgent, coming-of-age women's road novel. Highly recommended."--The Independent Reader
"Gordon writes like a woman with a gun to her head. She crowds her paragraphs with startling outsize metaphors that perfectly encapsulate the wild coming-of-age of 21-year-old Jane, an aspiring adventuress. . . . The vigorousness of its writing style, the way complex themes snake through one chapter after another, the sheer virtue of the lowlife heroes who pop up throughout -- all will convince readers to hitch a ride with Jane. It's well worth the trip." — ALA Booklist
"The book is a brave and miraculous piece of fiction, written with verve, guts and power from beginning to end. Let's not forget humor, anger and rebelliousness either....She Drove Without Stopping is a picaresque novel, one that follows the life of its hero, Jane Turner (a stand-in for the author?) over the course of a fifteen-year period. . . .The book turns into a road novel for a while — metaphorically Jane goes deeper and deeper into the beautiful but tainted USA. Journey's end is Los Angeles and its underbelly — Jane is always drawn to the lower depths, especially the odd, raffish characters who frequent it. There, among her fellow-dropouts, she finds a measure of happiness and perhaps even redemption. Gordon is an American Celine, a writer who is able to find humanity in all the wrong places." — Willard Manus, What's Up, and Lively-Arts.com
"Gordon's prose is witty and stylish, the kind of unblinking writing that isn't afraid to admit of a woman whooping it up all night, then waking next morning, disgusted and not a little elated to discover just how close to the edge she's crawled. Readers up to following Jane on her hell-bent journey are in for quite a trip." — Washington Post Book World
"The novel's greatest strength is the distinctive narrative voice adopted by Gordon, whose third-person narrative maintains a dry, gravely, witty tone, no matter how shocking the events being recounted. . . . The overall effect is of an older, experienced intelligence looking back on her younger self, ordering the events of her adventurous past with rueful good humor and an appealing lack of rancor." — Chicago Tribune
"Raucous, sexy, thrilling, urgent, coming-of-age women's road novel. Highly recommended."--The Independent Reader
"Gordon writes like a woman with a gun to her head. She crowds her paragraphs with startling outsize metaphors that perfectly encapsulate the wild coming-of-age of 21-year-old Jane, an aspiring adventuress. . . . The vigorousness of its writing style, the way complex themes snake through one chapter after another, the sheer virtue of the lowlife heroes who pop up throughout -- all will convince readers to hitch a ride with Jane. It's well worth the trip." — ALA Booklist
"The book is a brave and miraculous piece of fiction, written with verve, guts and power from beginning to end. Let's not forget humor, anger and rebelliousness either....She Drove Without Stopping is a picaresque novel, one that follows the life of its hero, Jane Turner (a stand-in for the author?) over the course of a fifteen-year period. . . .The book turns into a road novel for a while — metaphorically Jane goes deeper and deeper into the beautiful but tainted USA. Journey's end is Los Angeles and its underbelly — Jane is always drawn to the lower depths, especially the odd, raffish characters who frequent it. There, among her fellow-dropouts, she finds a measure of happiness and perhaps even redemption. Gordon is an American Celine, a writer who is able to find humanity in all the wrong places." — Willard Manus, What's Up, and Lively-Arts.com
"Gordon's prose is witty and stylish, the kind of unblinking writing that isn't afraid to admit of a woman whooping it up all night, then waking next morning, disgusted and not a little elated to discover just how close to the edge she's crawled. Readers up to following Jane on her hell-bent journey are in for quite a trip." — Washington Post Book World
"The novel's greatest strength is the distinctive narrative voice adopted by Gordon, whose third-person narrative maintains a dry, gravely, witty tone, no matter how shocking the events being recounted. . . . The overall effect is of an older, experienced intelligence looking back on her younger self, ordering the events of her adventurous past with rueful good humor and an appealing lack of rancor." — Chicago Tribune
The full review of SDWS in Review of Contemporary Fiction
https://writinghollywood.com/she-drove-without-stopping/Marilyn-Ann-Moss
An excellent interview about Gordon's writing process
https://www.tingemagazine.org/an-interview-with-jaimy-gordon/
https://writinghollywood.com/she-drove-without-stopping/Marilyn-Ann-Moss
An excellent interview about Gordon's writing process
https://www.tingemagazine.org/an-interview-with-jaimy-gordon/