Sam is 27 years old and, having dropped out of university multiple times and suffered a breakdown, he’s moved back in with his mum. While trying to find his feet again, he’s offered a job by his dad’s cousin, Keith Nutt. Without any other prospects and deciding to temporarily put aside his artistic dreams and focus on a real job, he becomes Keith’s apprentice - to whatever Keith does all day. Which seems to be mainly driving short distances visiting local businesses.
I was floored with how good Joff Winterhart’s second book, Driving Short Distances, was. I was tepid with his first, Days of the Bagnold Summer, which is why it’s taken me nearly a decade to check out his second, but - wow. What a remarkable jump in quality - Driving Short Distances is an incredible work.
There is basically no story - this is entirely about the characters of Sam and Keith and their relationship. Keith is old enough to be Sam’s father and, as Sam’s real father abandoned him and his mum when he was a teenager, Keith acts as a kind of surrogate dad. But Keith is also of a certain generation who doesn’t go in for any touchy-feely crap so it’s slow-going for him to open up to Sam, whose low self-esteem also makes it difficult for him to talk to Keith.
Winterhart’s characterisation of everyone in the book is so strong. Sam is almost annoyingly wispy and Keith almost too bullish, but you like both of them very quickly and it’s really amazing to see the nuances in their characters reveal themselves in small, yet powerful, ways over the course of the book. A glance, a comment, and a whole world is hinted at. I loved how we caught glimpses of Keith’s life and saw that he wasn’t just this rather hard-headed older chap, and similarly learned about Sam’s past as well.
But every character is so memorable. Val, the receptionist at one of the businesses they routinely visit, Hazel-Claire the saucy bakery lady, Mike the glum councillor. They’re so sharply realised in their individuality. And convincing too - I’ve met most of these people in real life and Winterhart captures their voices and mannerisms so perfectly.
The characters also undergo small - yet meaningfully symbolic - changes rather than lofty dramatic ones, which suits the kind of book this is. Sam simply learns to shake somebody’s hand more confidently while Keith tries different foods he wouldn’t have had before.
In the same way that Sam admires an old sign for its character and perceived shabby defects, Winterhart reveals the beauty of ordinary people and their lives, and how their unique features make them so striking - in turn making the reader appreciate them too.
Visually they’re very different - Sam is thin and tall, Keith is short and round - in a sort of Laurel and Hardy way, but they’re more similar than they appear. They’re both lost and lonely in similar ways despite being at different points of their lives. Which might make it sound like this is a maudlin book but it really isn’t. Winterhart isn’t looking down on his characters or feeling sorry for them, or playing up some cloying sentiment; it’s more of a statement of some melancholy as being a feature of their lives but not their whole lives, in the same way that we see other parts of their lives bring them fulfilment. There are even occasional moments of quiet comedy that pop up and work effectively.
There’s a very minor nitpicky aspect of the narrative I would say didn’t make sense to me. Sam has moved back to his childhood home and yet he’s new to all of the eccentric people in the town he grew up in, despite those people having always lived in the town and will never leave. Like Kenny, the mentally-disabled adult who’s Keith’s age - wouldn’t Sam have remembered him growing up and seeing him around town, like he does now? Maybe he just wasn’t as perceptive growing up - either way, it’s not a huge issue.
On the surface, this doesn’t sound like the least bit compelling to read - an older man and a young man driving around, chatting occasionally - and yet Driving Short Distances is absolutely one of the most genuinely enthralling books I’ve read in years. It’s a showcase of pitch-perfect characterisation written and drawn with real talent. I loved it all - the characters, their world - and Winterhart’s quality writing and expressive art effortlessly drew me along the whole way through. Driving Short Distances is the comics medium at its finest.
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