Description
Demoralized by his job and dissatisfied with his life, Mark punches the clock with increasing indifference. He wanted to help people; he’d always believed that as social worker he would be able to make a difference in people’s lives. But after six years of bureaucracy and pushing paper Mark has lost hope.
All that changes when he meets Bumi, an Indonesian restaurant worker. Moved from his small fishing village and sent to a residential school under the authoritarian Suharto regime, Bumi’s radical genius and obsessive-compulsive disorder raise suspicion among his paranoid neighbours. When several local children die mysteriously the neighbours fear reaches a fevered pitch and Bumi is forced to flee to Canada.
Brought together by a chance encounter on the subway, Mark and Bumi develop a friendship that forces them to confront their pasts. Moving gracefully between Canada and Indonesia and through the two men’s histories, Drive-by Saviours is the story of desire and connection among lonely people adrift in a crowded world.
Customer Review –
“Chris Benjamin masterfully, magically weaves together the seemingly disconnected worlds of Mark, a failed social-worker-turned-unhappy-grant-writer coming to the end of an even unhappier relationship, and Bumi, an Indonesian illegal immigrant on the run from his past and the ocd that dogs his present. Their chance encounter on a Toronto subway launches them on a complicated friendship that allows both men to finally confront the demons in their pasts and to find the hope in their futures.” Stephen Kimber, author of Reparations
Customer Review –
“Chris Benjamin’s debut novel is part contemporary fiction, part social commentary and part kick-in-the-ass storytelling. Although refreshingly unique in its portrayal of Indonesia’s cultural landscape, with its universal themes of greed, betrayal, family and redemption, Drive-by Saviours transcends both time and place. Through weaving Bumi’s tenacity with Mark’s ennui, Benjamin skillfully elucidates how globalization entangles us all in an artificially exploitive web and how escape can only be found through creating genuine bonds, those that deeply connect us one to another.” Carla Gunn, author of Amphibian
Customer Review –
The intersection between two worlds, the so-called first and third worlds, in the characters of Mark and Bumi, is seamlessly pulled off by the author. The themes in themselves are interesting, but really it is the entertaining and somehow heart-centred, or down-to-earth yet agile execution of those themes that is appealing. I found the prose carried me along effortlessly, while often steering me into emotional reactions, and not infrequently had me laughing out loud. A great read.
Customer Review –
We need to get it out into the general marketplace because it is an extremely smart but easy read that delves into issues that most contemporary fiction barely addresses. The parallel of Mark and Bumi’s lives and the secondary characters take us into mental disorders and social issues that are serious, but the author does it in such a way that you feel as if you’re watching their lives from a secret chamber somewhere secret. What a smart storyteller Chris Benjamin is
Customer Review –
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.
Customer Review –
Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant! The stories in this novel keep it moving along at a perfect pace. it is one of those books that when you are at the end you wish you weren’t. A must-read for every book club looking for entertainment and discussion.
Customer Review –
Drive-by Saviours is like two novels in one. Each character’s story could have been told with the other character relegated to a minor role in the narrative. Bumi’s story is told right from the day of his birth but Mark’s story unfolds in a different way; starting in the present day, with occasional flashbacks to fill in the gaps in his life story. Bumi has been in Toronto for some time before he and Mark meet on the TTC in chapter 17, almost at the exact halfway point in the book. Thereafter, they quickly become friends.
Both Mark and Bumi are dealing with a plethora of complex problems that complicate their lives: Obsessive-compulsive Disease (OCD), unfulfilling work/careers, estranged family members, bad memories from the past, physical and psychological torture, even (in Mark’s case) the plight of exploited Mexican migrant farm workers just to name a few. While Bumi struggles in oppressive Indonesia, Mark (who would appear to be living the idyllic life to many, Sarah even works as a catalogue model!) struggles to cope in ways that only someone from the Western world would understand, especially not wanting anything to do with family issues. So while there are obvious dissimilarities in their characters, there are still some common things they share, such as dealing with OCD tendencies and trying to understand them. Mark, seeing Bumi act in ways his sister did, is helped to recognize the disease, then seeks to reach out to his sister living on the west coast. Thus, in a way, Bumi acts as a ‘drive-by saviour’ to Mark, for soon thereafter he is suddenly deported from Canada and pulled out of Mark’s life while he is out west trying to reconcile with his sister Michelle. ~ James M. Fisher, founder of The Miramichi Review and The Seaboard Review