Don't take my word for it. Drive-by Saviours was just longlisted for a ReLit Award (“The country’s pre-eminent literary prize recognizing independent presses,” according to the Globe and Mail). And check out these reviews:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/drive-by-saviours-by-chris-b...

http://saltyink.com/2010/12/07/salty-inks-selected-top-notch-books-of-2010/

http://shelf-monkey.blogspot.ca/2011/01/monkey-droppings-drive-by-saviours-by.ht...

http://www.atlanticpublishers.ca/books/entry/drive-by-saviours/

http://www.chrisbenjaminwriting.com/chris-benjamin-writing-blog/chronicle-herald... ( )

Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin is a great read. It has two storylines beginning in a small island of Indonesia and a large city of Canada. Bumi, born to a fisherman's family, developed an obsessive compulsive disorder without knowing it. As a murder suspect, he fled to Canada, leaving his wife and children behind. Mark, a social worker in Toronto, lived with his girlfriend and helped with refugee claimants. "Toronto," meaning "meeting place" in Ojibwa, is where Mark encountered Bumi during a subway commute. Since then, their friendship had impacted each other's lives, and more dramatic events happened throughout the book.
I enjoyed this novel that has stories to tell and is set with the realistic social background. I was also fascinated with the characteristics of the two protagonists: Bumi's eccentrics and wits, and Mark's ideals and social conscience. I'm glad to see that elements of idealism and anti-materialism are with the Generation X.
The structure seems to be experimental. All the chapters alternately tell the story of Bumi in the third person and of Mark in the first person. Nevertheless, the novel is a page-turner to the end. ( )

De debuutroman van Chris Benjamin Drive-by Saviours heb ik eind 2010 al gekregen in het kader van het Early Reviewers programma van Librarything. In de kerstvakantie van 2010 heb ik er al eens een begin in gemaakt, het kon me toen niet boeiend. Best wel vol schaamte, want zo lang laat ik zelden een gekregen, geleend of gekocht boek ongelezen, ben ik er eind oktober 2011 opnieuw in begonnen. En weer konden de in elkaar vervlochten verhaallijnen me onvoldoende boeien. Drive-By Saviours beschrijft twee generatiegenoten, de Indonesische Bumi en de Canadese Mark. Bumi’s verhaal wordt verteld vanuit het perspectief van een alwetende verteller, Marks verhaal vanuit de ik-persoon. Juist bij Bumi, een als ongeletterde visser geboren Indonesiër die aanvankelijk niet verder komt dan het strand, zijn ouders en de markt in de dichtstbijzijnde plaats, wreekt zich de keuze van de schrijver. Bumi’s taalgebruik, gedachten en bewegingen kunnen eenvoudigweg niet op de leeftijd van een kind. Een ongeletterde Indonesiër zonder connecties met de buitenwereld loopt niet standaard Amerikaanse vloeken en scheldpartijen te uiten. De wijze waarop masturbatie wordt geïntroduceerd in de verhaallijn van Bumi is zo disfunctioneel, dat het stoorde. Tamelijk willekeurig worden tijdsprongen gemaakt binnen één hoofdstuk, zonder dat het plot zich dadelijk ontvouwt.

De context van een Indonesië dat zich nog ontwikkelt, stap voor stap scholing en kansen voor jongeren introduceert versus een in een vrij en welvarend Canada geboren jongere, is verschillend. Een overheersende (stief)vader en de omgang met dwangneuroses bindt. De twee ontmoeten elkaar in Toronto. De levens van beiden wordt door die ontmoeting blijvend veranderd. Ik ben echter niet verder dan p.80 gekomen.

Chris Benjamin heeft veel landen in Noord-Amerika, West-Afrika, Europa en Azië gezien als freelance schrijver. Hij schrijft voor diverse Canadese magazines over sociale gerechtigheid en milieuproblemen. ( )

I really struggled with this book and wouldn't recommend it. I found Bumi's story a chore to read but it did become easier to follow once Bumi met Mark. The book is too long and wordy for the great story I thought it would be.

I'm really pleased I received this via Library Thing Early Reviewer as I would have actually bought this book based on the blurb. ( )

Bumi lives in Indonesia. Mark lives in Canada. Bumi makes belts for a living. Mark is a social worker. The one thing they seem to have in common is a turbulent upbringing and uncomfortable relations with their families early in life. Their worlds seem far removed from each other, but they end up inextricably linked.

I came by this book entirely by chance, and the first time I tried to read it, it didn’t stick at all. I struggled through the first fifty pages in December, and then just gave up. It didn’t gel well with my situation at the time, as a holidaymaker on a sunny windswept island in the Atlantic, and so I decided it certainly isn’t a light holiday read. Having now reached the end, I’m not completely sure that it is my kind of book at all.

The characters are a funny bunch. The Canadians mainly annoyed me; Mark is entirely defined by his job and seems to be quite flat beyond that, despite being the only character who is written in the first person, and his girlfriend Sarah is portrayed as, shock horror, both beautiful and intelligent – how can this be?! Towards the end, I thought Sarah turned into a clichéd neurotic female figure and I think that cemented my annoyance at the whole Toronto section. At the start, I found the Indonesian sections somewhat impenetrable – there is a lot of unnecessary wittering about Bumi’s childhood that, although interesting and well-written, is just too long – but once Bumi hit adulthood, he became the most interesting figure in the book, and stayed that way throughout.

This is an excellent example of a book with two alternating foci; to begin with, the two worlds of Mark and Bumi seem so far removed from each other that I wondered how Chris Benjamin would ever convincingly bring them together, but the shift onto a collision course is deliciously instantaneous. This is probably the one feature of the book that I will remember long after the wanderlust and the intermittent boredom and frustration have long been forgotten.

So, is this a positive review, or a negative one? I’m still undecided. I ploughed through the second reading in a couple of days but I held on until the end out of a sense of obligation because I knew I had to review it for the ER programme, rather than out of any genuine interest. I was rewarded, to some extent, for my perseverance, but I think it will end up in the charity shop before long. ( )