Rollicking ... Readers are advised to buckle their seat belts before opening these pages ... Guns vividly captures this metropolitan milieu in the book’s opening chapters, which roll by like a long panning shot depicting inner-city life in all its complexity, inequality, squalor and joy ... I walked away from this book as if I’d survived a car crash, feeling shocked and uncertain. What just happened? ... Either way, our driver Priya Guns deserves a big tip for taking us on such an enthralling ride.
Your Driver Is Waiting is at its best when Guns shows the monotony of Damani’s daily toil and satirizes the exploitation and indignity that come with her work ... Your Driver Is Waiting is an ambitious project, taking on performative ally-ship, racial discrimination and the class system all at once. It would be challenging for a veteran author to weave together theory and story, moving seamlessly between the two, while maintaining a cast of fully realized characters. Guns’s inaugural endeavor may sacrifice some nuance for message — but it will no doubt resonate with readers, particularly those who see their own struggles in Damani’s.
The novel places systemic oppression and exploitation front and centre as Damani tosses out scathing critiques of the gig economy and white supremacy in much the same way that she throws out racist and sexist passengers ... With a full tank, and rage in her revolutionary heart, Damani drives towards a better world.
Propulsive ... Damani’s bleakly amusing commentary on the worst parts of her life...Your Driver is almost as much manifesto as novel. It’s a dead serious attack on economic, racial and gender injustice ... It all adds up to a remarkable piece of writing. Your Driver is Waiting is jaggedly uneven. Mostly flat characterization and long swathes of didactic righteousness mark one side. On the other, though, there’s a fast-paced narrative with bite and, above all, Damani — smart, funny, brave and feral — a character not soon forgotten.
Sharp and bonkers ... The third act...leads to a somewhat overheated ending, but there’s plenty of rich commentary on gig work, race, and white privilege. This has plenty of bite.
