The Maintenance of Headway
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the Booker-shortlisted author acclaimed as having "no literary precedent" (Independent) comes a gently absurd examination of the systems that trap and frustrate us daily. Fans of dry humor will enjoy this tale of mishap and folly, told from the point of view of a bus driver who's been charged to maintain a precise distance between himself and other buses--a directive that leads him to ignore the very passengers he's meant to serve.
Witty, allegorical, and intelligent, this is a novel for all those who have ever run for a bus, only to have it pull away as they reach its doors. Showcasing all of Mills' strengths, it is the perfect reintroduction for American readers to an incomparable talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An unnamed London bus driver offers a hilariously real view of the London bus service, with all of its bureaucratic absurdity, in this short novel from Man Booker finalist Mills (The Restraint of Beasts). The author is also a bus driver, which adds colorful authenticity to this wacky novel filled with goofy characters and madcap situations. The driver is a patient fellow, calmly accepting criticism from self-important, officious inspectors, who hand out offense chits for violations of the bus drivers' code, such as being too early, being too late, and, most importantly, failing to observe "the maintenance of headway" (i.e., not keeping the proper distance between buses on their scheduled runs). The narrator and his bus driver pals do everything they can to thwart the inspectors, all while complaining about their supervisors' incompetence, annoying passengers, inconvenient road work, inattentive bicyclists, and arrogant taxi drivers. The drivers justify their behavior by their unshakable belief in the Theory of Running Early and the Law of Cumulative Lateness hilarious explanations of the bus service's futile attempts to choreograph bus movement. This sliver of life behind the wheel may seem silly, but it is consistently funny and perceptively portrays the plight of the little guy struggling to find sanity in an incomprehensible bureaucratic rat race.
