Driving In The Dark

This is the novel that, as I said, grew out of a short story. In fact, even more deliciously, I later extracted a character from it (Shirley) and gave her a story of her own (it appears in a later collection, “Changing Babies”).. The storl is narrated by a man, a coach driver called Desmond. It really describes a long nervous breakdown as he drives through Britain, searching for a son he’s never seen, the result of a liaison long ago. I write a great deal about lost children – lost through divorce, kidnapping, abduction, incest. It’s also a voyage through various hinterlands of modern life – a caravan park in Spalding, a house, condemned for demolition, in a backstreet of Reading. I like people who are washed up, who live on the edge. Like Heather in “Porky”, this man seems to be carrying on life without me; I’ve thought about him a great deal in the intervening years (this novel was written in 1988). I’m very fond of poor bewildered Desmond, who is trying to understand women. I suppose it’s a sort of road movie, a dark night of the soul. And it speaks up for the eighties’ forgotten gender: men.

Book Description

Desmond never did have much luck with women – except in getting them through their driving tests. Now a coach driver, he is at the most crucial crossroads of his life. His wife has thrown him out. The crisis serves only to deepen his despair over another failed liaison – until he elects to steer his coach on a spectacularly reckless quest for the son he has never seen.