Holloway, Monica. Driving with Dead People: A Memoir. New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2007. Print.
Small wonder that, at nine years old, Monica Holloway develops a fascination with the local funeral home. With a father who drives his Ford pickup with a Kodak movie camera sitting shotgun just in case he sees an accident, and whose home movies feature more footage of disasters than of his children, Monica is primed to become a morbid child.
Yet in spite of her father's bouts of violence and abuse, her mother's selfishness and prim denial, and her siblings' personal battles and betrayals, Monica never succumbs to despair. Instead, she forges her own way, thriving at school and becoming fast friends with Julie Kilner, whose father is the town mortician. She and Julie prefer the casket showroom, where they take turns lying in their favorite coffins, to the parks and grassy backyards in her hometown of Elk Grove, Ohio. In time, Monica and Julie get a job driving the company hearse to pick up bodies at the airport, yet even Monica's growing independence can't protect her from her parents' irresponsibility, and from the feeling that she simply does not deserve to be safe. Little does she know, as she finally strikes out on her own, that her parents' biggest betrayal has yet to be revealed. Overall the resounding theme of the book would be that you can always be better than you're environment. Throughout all her life Monica Holloway has had to endure an up bringing that would have broken and ruined many children. Her father raped her, her mother allowed him to do such things and she was raised in a family where death is seen as beautiful. Many people would have taken a slow downhill slope into the realm of the psychopath but Monica didn't despite all the pain and sadness that she endured she got past it and was able to Overall this was a book that was very well written and the writer did a fantastic job conveying the proper emotions which the characters would have felt making them truly come to life. It was a well paced story nothing seemed to be out of the chronological order that she set up. But despite that I personally found it to be a dull book that decided to put in a plot twist in the end in order to maintain the attention it was reviving which I admit is pretty good. Finally I would say that the over all theme is getting past the barriers that your environment have set up in front of you, there is no greater example than being a rape victim which is what she also was. She was strong enough to move past and survive and we should think about how strong they are and how strong we are for getting up everyday. |
Driving with Dead People