life rattle show no. 1229

Presented on THURSDAY, November 8, 2012

Hosted by John Dunford

featuring

"Goodbye"
and
"Not Again"

by Shane Driver

tonight's Show

On tonight's show, Life Rattle Number 1229, we build on last week’s program with another two stories from writer Shane Driver, who will read at this year’s Totally Unknown Writers Festival. These two stories are the last in Driver’s series that delved 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 last week’s story, “Thank You,” we learned of the death of our narrator’s father. In our first story tonight, "Goodbye" we bid him farewell.

In our second story, "Not Again" our narrator, a few years older, plays more of a support role in the parent-child relationship.

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