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Driver
A bracing novel of hybrid prose-poetry about a man who runs a high-speed train in France, the rail strikes and monotony and sometimes sheer intensity of the job, and the hypnotic effects of the work on his mind—a story born out of the author’s experience as a real-life train driver.
Driver begins as a contemporary apprentice the narrator, a young man from the provinces, comes to Paris and enrolls in a course to become a train driver. As he discovers the train and its workings, from its internal machinery to its operative head, he is transported into a world both technical and poetic, with its own laws and codes, its own specialized language, its heroes and legends, its passions and boredoms, its dangers.
Drawing from his experience of nearly two decades as a train driver, Mattia Felice constructs a propulsive narrative of meals scarfed down on the go, of solitude and sleepless nights, accidents and breakdowns, conversations with friends and solidarity with fellow workers. His train, like the ship in Moby-Dick, becomes a microcosm for life itself.
Driver is a book about work, about the romance of the rails, but also about the tedium and intensity of doing such a job day in and day out, as well as the workers’ continual struggle to improve their working conditions through strikes and protests.
The language of Driver is as eclectic and vibrant as the world the train workers Filice’s novel blends prose with verse, and brims with technical terms, inside jokes, abbreviations, quotations, and snatches of non-French languages spoken by the train workers. Unsentimental but full of feeling, wonderfully voiced and rhythmic, Driver is a stirring ode to the power of the collective.
Driver begins as a contemporary apprentice the narrator, a young man from the provinces, comes to Paris and enrolls in a course to become a train driver. As he discovers the train and its workings, from its internal machinery to its operative head, he is transported into a world both technical and poetic, with its own laws and codes, its own specialized language, its heroes and legends, its passions and boredoms, its dangers.
Drawing from his experience of nearly two decades as a train driver, Mattia Felice constructs a propulsive narrative of meals scarfed down on the go, of solitude and sleepless nights, accidents and breakdowns, conversations with friends and solidarity with fellow workers. His train, like the ship in Moby-Dick, becomes a microcosm for life itself.
Driver is a book about work, about the romance of the rails, but also about the tedium and intensity of doing such a job day in and day out, as well as the workers’ continual struggle to improve their working conditions through strikes and protests.
The language of Driver is as eclectic and vibrant as the world the train workers Filice’s novel blends prose with verse, and brims with technical terms, inside jokes, abbreviations, quotations, and snatches of non-French languages spoken by the train workers. Unsentimental but full of feeling, wonderfully voiced and rhythmic, Driver is a stirring ode to the power of the collective.
368 pages, Paperback
Published October 21, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 29, 2025
Driver is a novel based on Mattia Filice’s 20-plus years as a train engineer in France, following the narrator from his training period to his development from neophyte to full professional, to the stretch of time as an old hand. Far from being a simple job of acceleration and deceleration, Driver reveals the task of driving trains as onerous, stressful, and potentially lethal.
On the job, the narrator discovers first-hand the horrors created by people who use trains as a suicide device. Given the inertia created by pulling hundreds of tons of cars and freight, trains can require 700 feet to completely stop, so the driver’s eyes are always on the far horizon, while his brain realizes that even his immediate reaction to a lethal situation often will be insufficient to prevent tragedy. The narrator’s body count from his own career comes to 16. (We learn of rail employees whose sole job it is to hose down the fronts and sides of engines.) Wildlife, too, stray onto tracks and risk potentially damaging the train’s undercarriage, severing cables as their bodies are pulped. Pranksters place objects on tracks to see the objects destroyed, not realizing their ability to derail the train.
Collisions require stops so the train can be examined for damage and so, in certain cases, the engineer can talk with authorities after accidents involving humans. Inspections require time, of course, time lost that may put a train behind schedule. However, making up for time by driving faster only further endangers the train and its cargo (sometimes human passengers), and engineers are fined for driving too fast: they work on tight schedules with little room for maneuvering.
Not surprisingly, the training period has a high attrition rate, largely determined by each recruit’s mix of self-discipline and steely nerves. During a field run, one old hand asks a trainee to turn, face the back of train, plug his ears, and crouch down, which the trainee does without question. The old hand has seen a suicide ahead, knows the train cannot stop in time to prevent it, and doesn’t want the recruit to have to see or hear it.
Train driving is a lonely job, and whole days—hundreds of miles—can be traversed without meeting or talking to anyone. Most time is spent alone with one’s thoughts, even at day’s end. Train routes often end far from the drivers’ homes, so they often sleep at junctions in bunks designed for them, in rooms never as comfortable and quiet as home, and the sleep rarely as good.
The last thing seasoned drivers must remain mindful of is the annual health examination for hearing loss, weight gain, high cholesterol, diabetes, and psychological fitness. One man the narrator trains with suffers a paralyzing stroke at the age of 28, probably from stress.
Filice’s prose offers a rhythmic analog to the rhythms of a driving train, not in meter (clackety-clack) but in pacing. Sentences alternate between appearing broken into lines, as in poetry and drama, and being splayed across the page in paragraphs, when the need to emphasize specific thoughts, feelings, and actions is of less importance. Filice’s translator, Jacques Houis, does well at conveying this. Technically, it’s a type of avant-garde expression that doesn’t feel avant-garde.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
On the job, the narrator discovers first-hand the horrors created by people who use trains as a suicide device. Given the inertia created by pulling hundreds of tons of cars and freight, trains can require 700 feet to completely stop, so the driver’s eyes are always on the far horizon, while his brain realizes that even his immediate reaction to a lethal situation often will be insufficient to prevent tragedy. The narrator’s body count from his own career comes to 16. (We learn of rail employees whose sole job it is to hose down the fronts and sides of engines.) Wildlife, too, stray onto tracks and risk potentially damaging the train’s undercarriage, severing cables as their bodies are pulped. Pranksters place objects on tracks to see the objects destroyed, not realizing their ability to derail the train.
Collisions require stops so the train can be examined for damage and so, in certain cases, the engineer can talk with authorities after accidents involving humans. Inspections require time, of course, time lost that may put a train behind schedule. However, making up for time by driving faster only further endangers the train and its cargo (sometimes human passengers), and engineers are fined for driving too fast: they work on tight schedules with little room for maneuvering.
Not surprisingly, the training period has a high attrition rate, largely determined by each recruit’s mix of self-discipline and steely nerves. During a field run, one old hand asks a trainee to turn, face the back of train, plug his ears, and crouch down, which the trainee does without question. The old hand has seen a suicide ahead, knows the train cannot stop in time to prevent it, and doesn’t want the recruit to have to see or hear it.
Train driving is a lonely job, and whole days—hundreds of miles—can be traversed without meeting or talking to anyone. Most time is spent alone with one’s thoughts, even at day’s end. Train routes often end far from the drivers’ homes, so they often sleep at junctions in bunks designed for them, in rooms never as comfortable and quiet as home, and the sleep rarely as good.
The last thing seasoned drivers must remain mindful of is the annual health examination for hearing loss, weight gain, high cholesterol, diabetes, and psychological fitness. One man the narrator trains with suffers a paralyzing stroke at the age of 28, probably from stress.
Filice’s prose offers a rhythmic analog to the rhythms of a driving train, not in meter (clackety-clack) but in pacing. Sentences alternate between appearing broken into lines, as in poetry and drama, and being splayed across the page in paragraphs, when the need to emphasize specific thoughts, feelings, and actions is of less importance. Filice’s translator, Jacques Houis, does well at conveying this. Technically, it’s a type of avant-garde expression that doesn’t feel avant-garde.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
November 20, 2025
Maybe the most exciting book I've read in 2025, Mattia Filice’s prose-poetry-prose mashup is a twenty-year exposé, peeling back the layers of isolation and loneliness (yet, ironically, brotherhood) in the life of a French mécanos - a train driver.
Those twenty years seems to, in one regard, fly by with the snap of a finger, as life does tend to do, unfortunately -- yet the other thumb and forefinger move uncoordinated, in slow motion, unable to build up the friction they need to make that snap. Nothing catches on. The rails are interminable, especially overnights, especially outside of Paris. Working overnights has a cost that they don't tell you about, one that leeches your life from you slowly. The cab is mostly just you and your dead man switch – and then occasional kindergarten class trip who are impressed by everything you do and are, and that life comes rushing right back into you.
The machine gun fire language is a volley from the heart and soul of a working life. The brother- and sisterhood make up an incredible part of the journey. Strike action after strike action, win after loss after win, right from the trenches. In the end, the drivers’ biggest victory isn't even for themselves. Now that's a real victory.
Those twenty years seems to, in one regard, fly by with the snap of a finger, as life does tend to do, unfortunately -- yet the other thumb and forefinger move uncoordinated, in slow motion, unable to build up the friction they need to make that snap. Nothing catches on. The rails are interminable, especially overnights, especially outside of Paris. Working overnights has a cost that they don't tell you about, one that leeches your life from you slowly. The cab is mostly just you and your dead man switch – and then occasional kindergarten class trip who are impressed by everything you do and are, and that life comes rushing right back into you.
The machine gun fire language is a volley from the heart and soul of a working life. The brother- and sisterhood make up an incredible part of the journey. Strike action after strike action, win after loss after win, right from the trenches. In the end, the drivers’ biggest victory isn't even for themselves. Now that's a real victory.
November 16, 2025
Quirky, funny, weird, smart. Gets into some good commentary about the odd relationships between the working class and bosses. All focused on driving trains… not sure I enjoyed it but I appreciated a lot of it. Honestly, a pretty hard book lol.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews