life rattle show no. 1228

Presented on THURSDAY, November 1, 2012

Hosted by John Dunford

featuring

"The Call"
and
"Thank you"

by Shane Driver

tonight's Show

Tonight, on Life Rattle Number 1228, we present two new stories from Life Rattle writer Shane Driver.

Last week we gave you a sneak peek at the writing of Shane Driver, who will read at this year’s Totally Unknown Writers Festival, when we featured the first of a series of stories, written by Driver, that delve into the profoundly complex tangle of love and loss within a family.

Shane Driver was born in Newmarket in 1982, where he and his family lived until 1990, when they moved to Oakville. After a difficult youth, Driver decided he wanted more out of life and enrolled in college in Peterborough to study business. There, he met his long-time partner, Paulina. After graduation, Driver moved to Ottawa, to earn a marketing diploma. His studies were interrupted when his father died unexpectedly from a heart attack.
Driver and Paulina moved back to Mississauga. Work in sales left Driver uninspired. His worst nightmare was to spend his life in a career he hated, as his father had. With the support of his partner Paulina, and his mother Charmaine, Driver returned to school, to university, and found his passion—writing. He is now enrolled in a writing and communications program, working to fulfill his dream.

With his straight ahead style, Driver can deceive you into believing that writing about a traumatic experience is simple. It isn’t. Driver’s ability to bring a reader, or listener in this case, to their knees is powered by his instinctive eye for catching the telling details. Just as life does, he stacks the absurdly funny right next to the gut wrenching, and leaves us reeling.

At the end, Driver’s heart-rending honesty and his willingness to show each character’s, and by extension our own, deepest conflicts and vulnerabilities, makes each word ring true.

In tonight’s first story all of the interaction happens over the phone.

The second story brings our narrator and his father together, in the flesh.

Note: tonight's stories contain material that some may find offensive. Listener discretion is advised.