What to say about [She Drove Without Stopping]? At first I thought.... oh no..... another novel about an abusive father ruining his daughter's life -- I don't mean that in any mean way, I often read MSS for a small literary firm, and it is a huge sub-genre and there are a lot of passionate, sad but unpublishable books out there..... Happy to say, swiftly the book moves into another trajectory, although, to be sure, Jane's relationship with her father (or lack of it) is at the heart of everything she does. Set in the 50's to mid-late 60's it's the story of Jane Turner. A shrink tells the family that Jane is overly obsessed with sex when she is still a spratling and this causes the father, who was a bit too intimate (teetering on 'the line', I'd say) not only to withdraw from Jane physically but also emotionally, as if disgusted by the thought of a girl who is so overtly sexual. So Jane, who is actually more like her father than her two sisters, struggles into young adulthood with being a feisty, independent and very horny girl. Loathing dormitory life at her Ohio college, she moves into an abandoned house, acquiring a car, a wonderful boyfriend (truly a saint) and a bunch of friends, all men. Things happen -- some good, and many quite appallingly bad, but Jane does seem to have a guardian angel of some kind at work although some of it is her own spunky response to things. What lifts it above other coming of age novels involving women is a headlong rush of muscly images, unflinching prose and trenchant humor..... it's above all a fun book, peopled with peculiar characters who ring true, the Indian landlord Cochise, the junkman Willie..... the events that lead to Jane growing into a better understanding of herself are like a wild maelstrom that gets worse and worse until it's as if something just spits Jane out into a new plane. The deeper theme, how repressive and punishing our culture is toward overtly sexual women, is well handled. I've talked myself into bumping it up to ****1/2. ( )

Sheesh! Where to begin? How do you boil down, summarize, explain or critique a story as big and complex as SHE DROVE WITHOUT STOPPING? It's a novel that is so unique it seems to defy easy comparisons. Jaimy Gordon has created, in Jane Turner, a character to be admired and pitied simultaneously. Because she is without question a victim, but she adamantly refuses to be a victim. Does that make sense? Probably not, but there it is. I'll try to explain this, but probably won't succeed.

SHE DROVE WITHOUT STOPPING is essentially Jane's life story, or at least the first 21 years of it. She is the middle child (there are two sisters who remain minor characters) of a successful corporate lawyer who dotes on her for the first eight years of her life. Indeed there appears to be a pattern of inappropriate squeezing, groping and fondling on the part of the father, Philip Turner. And if there is one particular villain in the story it is the philandering father, referred to by even Jane as simply "Philip Turner." Jane's mother is something of a basket case who makes regular visits to her analyst, Dr. Zwilling, while attending to her daughters in a more or less robotic fashion.

Confused by all the fatherly groping, Jane is nevertheless devastated when her father ceases to lavish attention on her and even begins to act as though he hates her and finds her repulsive. Jane's puberty and junior high and high school years are a tortuous horror for her. (But hey, isn't it for all of us, come to think of it?) But packed off to the unusually liberal "Harmonia College" in rural Ohio, Jane finally busts loose, buying a car and moving off campus and making friends with a rather grotesque group of locals, including Willie D. Usher, the Soul of Commerce; Felix the bartender at the Downtown Rec Club; Fred Blood the grocery clerk; Officer Rollo the local constable; unemployed actor Roger O. Booth (aka Albert Huzzy), who is the friend (camp follower) of California golden boy artist Jimmy Fluharty. Jane is smitten almost immediately with Jimmy and they move into an abandoned farmhouse together and spend a lot of time making the beast with two backs as well as other sexual shapes. Jimmy seems to be a person who loves himself more than anyone else, but Jane doesn't care - there's unquestionably a lot more lust than love in the relationship.

But RAPE intervenes, and, finding justice not forthcoming, Jane flees, first back home to Baltimore where her parents are in the middle of a bitter divorce. So she hits the road in her "moneygreen Buick" for further misadventures. The secondary and primary roads west seem a lot like Huck Finn's Mississippi - filled with more characters, more "adventures." And when she hits Los Angeles and joins up with Jimmy again, another whole cast of grotesques assemble - Cochise and Mama, Billy and Marie, Raymozo the Rayman, and even Dr. Zwilling turns up again, transplanted to the west coast as a new-age therapist.

Like I said at the beginning, this is a really BIG book, bigger even than its 390 pages might suggest. There is a whole life in here, Jane Turner's life, and how she interacts with an enormous cast of well-defined characters. Jane is highly sexed, confused and, most of all, ANGRY, although she's not quite sure why. Because, as she states more than once, she began life as an extremely happy baby. Her subsequent family life, however, is a horror, and things continue to get worse as poor Jane is alienated, humiliated, raped and scorned. (A sequence of events that left me feeling faintly guilty just for being male.) And yet, fear not, because at the very end there is the hint of a kind of redemption and freedom. And hey, if we're lucky, maybe even a sequel. The book is twenty years old now, and I can't help wondering how Jane's life turned out. So yeah, maybe a sequel would be in order. It's a BIG book, a LONG book, but by God - and pardon my cliche - it is "gripping human drama." Jaimy Gordon knows how to tell a story. And SHE DROVE WITHOUT STOPPING is a darn good one. ( )

What a thrilling mixture this book is! Partly a road trip story, partly a coming-of-age tale, partly a portrait of the poet as a young woman, this novel interweaves sexual exploration, exploitation of women and feminist anger, race and class issues, money and its real and imagined significance, the impact of family, and questions of loyalty and friendship.

Jane Turner, the product of an unhappy childhood, decides she can no longer stand living in the dorms in her college and sets off on what she hopes will be the life of an adventuress. Of course, adventure in reality isn't what it seems to be from the outside, and over the course of the novel Jane encounters a variety of charming or dangerous characters (who largely fall into the category of people who would appall her parents), drives cars on the verge of falling apart, struggles with her writing and with her father's hostility, and questions herself every step (or mile) of the way.

As with her National Book Award winner, Lord of Misrule which was one of my favorite books of last year, Gordon's writing is gorgeous and allusive, and her compassion for her characters is clear; however, this book is less structured and "conventional" and much more personal and brave than her latest work.

It is far too intimidating to review Jaimy Gordon who writes brilliantly and courageously. So very different is this tale from her National Book Award winner Lord of Misrule, yet the characters are just as complex but mysteriously lovable and stay with you long after the last page. Simply superb. ( )