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The first novel by Jan Kerouac, daughter of Jack—a thrilling work of autobiographical fiction that captures with inspired detail a life driven by adventure, drugs, far-flung travel, and like her father, a relentless quest for pure experience.
“Was it January or February? The coconut fronds waving, shining like green hair in the sun, gave no clue.” Fifteen-year-old Jan is pregnant, gamely living off rice and whatever fish her boyfriend John can catch in Yelapa, Mexico. Her sojourn there–both thrilling and heartbreaking–marks the beginning of a life of restless wandering. Jan Kerouac, the only child of Jack Kerouac, first published her autobiographical novel Baby Driverin 1981. Fearless and frank, Baby Driveris the story of a difficult childhood, marked by maternal warmth and paternal disregard, and of the heady freedom and precariousness of self-reliance.
REVIEWS
“If [Jack] Kerouac sometimes put a spiritual gloss on poverty and life on the edge, his daughter offered an unflinching vision.” —The Guardian
“A full-fledged writer on the brink, nearly mad, in search of something she still has yet to name.... In spite of her pain, Kerouac is obsessed with the need to look, to experience, to pierce beyond the surface and understand all that flashes there.... Kerouac writes in a style that is vivid, absorbing, unpretentious. She steers clear of vain and maudlin tones by attacking her ordeals with honesty and clarity.” —San Francisco Examiner
“What’s rolled out in this ‘autobiographical novel’ is Jan’s childhood on the Lower East Side with gritty, hard-pressed mom Joan, and then her fast track into the 1960s demimonde: drugs, petty theft, drugs, Bellevue, drugs, juvenile detention centers, drugs. An older Jan in her twenties is also aired: commune life in New Mexico; working as a hooker; being a heroin-shooter; peyote session; a South American odyssey in the company of a scary psychopath.” —Publishers Weekly
