Product Description

Leigh Fielding wants a life. Seriously. Having spent the past five years on dialysis, she has one simple wish: to make it to her thirtieth birthday. Now, thanks to the generosity of the late Larry Resnick and his transplanted kidney, it looks like her wish may come true.

With her newfound vitality (and Larry’s kidney) in tow, Leigh hits the road for an excursion that will carry her from Wisconsin to California, with a few stops in between: Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, the Rockies, Las Vegas–and a memorable visit to thank Larry’s family for the second chance.

Yet Leigh’s itinerary takes a sudden detour when she picks up a seventeen-year-old hitchhiker, Denise, a runaway with a bunch of stories and a couple of secrets. Add a long-lost mother, a loaded gun, an RV full of swingers, and Hall and Oates’s Greatest Hits to the mix, and Driving Sideways becomes a hilarious and original journey of friendship, hope, and discovery.


Praise for Driving Sideways:

“Driving Sideways is a gorgeous novel . . . hugely entertaining and very touching. Jess Riley’s voice is irreverent and wonderful, and her writing is genius.”
–Marian Keyes, author of Anybody Out There?

"A hopeful and hilarious debut ... Jess Riley may well be my new favorite author." –Jen Lancaster, author of Bitter is the New Black

“Brilliant . . . Jess Riley proves herself a huge new talent.”
–Kristy Kiernan, author of Catching Genius

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42236 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-20
• Released on: 2008-05-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This seemingly endless road trip novel has the potential to become a thrill ride, but it makes too many wrong turns and never gets above low gear. After receiving a kidney transplant, 28-year-old Leigh Fielding notices some strange developments: sudden interests in, for instance, graphic novels, kayaking and ethnic food. Convinced she's channeling the spirit of her donor, Larry Resnick, Leigh decides to go on an Unfinished Business Tour, visiting her best friend, an ex-boyfriend and her mother, and tracking down Larry's family. The notion of Leigh inheriting Larry's traits and tastes is explored amusingly and a few surprises pop up (a supposedly stranded teenage girl among them), but Riley puts too much stock in Leigh's voice, which, while sometimes funny, is too self-involved to leave much room for the reader. This particular trip is too long and exhausting for its own good. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
Praise for Driving Sideways:
"Leigh Fielding was diagnosed with kidney disease and recently received a transplant. Since then, she’s been trying all kinds of new things and comes to believe that she’s channeling the donor, Larry. She decides to leave her central Wisconsin home for a road trip to meet Larry’s family and see if he’s anything like the new personality she has acquired. Things go awry at the Minnesota border when a teenage girl named Denise steals Leigh’s purse and uses it to blackmail Leigh into giving her a ride to L.A. On the way they visit classic tourist traps and try to stay out of trouble, especially since Denise claims that it’s her crazy ex in the black sedan that seems to be following them. Leigh’s road trip continues, embracing both highs and lows, alternately hilarious, humiliating, and heartbreaking, often within the same sentence. Smart and funny without being forced, sentimental without being maudlin, Riley’s funny, picaresque vision of America will make readers wish they could go along with Leigh on her next trip."
— Hilary Hatton
"Driving Sideways is a gorgeous novel -- I LOVED it!! It's enjoyable, uplifting, and so so so funny and sparky. I found it hugely entertaining and very touching. Jess Riley's voice is irreverent and wonderful, and her writing is genius." -- Marian Keyes, author of Anybody Out There?
"A hopeful and hilarious debut ... Jess Riley may well be my new favorite author." -- Jen Lancaster, author of Bitter is the New Black
"Brilliant … Jess Riley proves herself a huge new talent." -- Kristy Kiernan, author of Catching Genius

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE

I am alone no longer.

It’s strange how much you can change in just one year. Twelve months ago, I’d have laughed in your face if you told me I’d be packing for a road trip this morning. Not rudely, of course, but because traveling anywhere remote was a remote possibility for me at that point. I’d have sooner believed you if you’d said, “One year from now, you will become a Scientologist, learn the pan flute, and join a Bay City Rollers tribute band.”

But I’ve had a change of heart. Well, kidney, really. I’m leaving for Los Angeles this morning, about to do some things long overdue. My Saturn is idling in the driveway, stuffed with suitcases I’ve never taken anywhere but to hospitals. I feel as if I’ve just discovered that the cure for cancer is dark chocolate followed by two orgasms. I think I’ve forgotten to pack my toothbrush, but I don’t care. I can buy one on the way. The thought thrills me.

“So you’re really doing this,” my brother, James, says from behind me, sending me out of my skin.

I jump, making a hair ballish–noise like aak, and spin around to face him. He crosses his arms and fixes me with his practiced stare: one part condescension, two parts disbelief. It’s the same look James gives the paperboy when the Fond du Lac Reporter misses the welcome mat on the front porch by an inch or more. I lean back into my car, pretending to check my cooler of snacks and bottled water while trying to regain my pretrip composure. As my surrogate parent for the last sixteen years, James has always been able to sneak up on me—catching me in an innocuous act like reading and still making me feel as if I’d been caught stealing from a quadriplegic. “Yes, I’m really going.”

“Does Kate know?” he snipes.

“She will,” I reply. I shut the cooler and turn to face James.

“Leigh, why do you even care? She’s such an asshole. She’s a footnote.”

“I just do, is all.” Kate is our mother, who developed the curious conviction when James and I were younger that she would one day become a great actress. The morning she left us for Hollywood, she crouched next to me and whispered absently, “Never settle. Take big risks.” Then she stepped into her Ford Pinto and lurched away from the curb, her silver bumper glinting in the sunlight, the scent of Charlie cologne mingling with exhaust in the air. I was five years old. I sat on the curb waiting for her until Sesame Street came on, after which I returned to the curb to wait for her return. Twenty-three years later, I’m still waiting.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” James walks around my car and stands directly in front of me. He looks spooky without having had his first cup of coffee, a little like a B-list actor with an emerging heroin addiction. Not that James has ever done heroin. James actually times his alcoholic beverages—one per hour—to ensure he never “loses control.” Eighty percent of my friends have had a crush on him at one point or another. Even the guys. They all want to be him, until they spend more than an hour in his presence. “When’s the last time you even talked to her?” he continues.

I ignore him and pretend to examine my kayak, which I’ve secured with bungee cords to the roof of my car. Exhaust forms a foggy pool around my ankles. I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell him Kate has no idea I’m dropping by. Or that the last time I talked to her was about seven years ago.

“And how well did that conversation go?”

I ignore him some more. If I ignore him long enough, James usually gives up.

“Leigh, be reasonable. You’re in no shape for some . . . road trip . . . that will just disappoint you.”

His tone makes my stomach contract into a fist. “I’m in fine shape. Dr. Jensen said so last week.” I adjust my kayak one last time. Why couldn’t I have just gotten up ten minutes earlier? I suddenly hate the snooze bar. I wish I could think of something clever to say, but the best I can do is, “Besides. I’ve been reasonable my whole life. That’s the problem.” James rolls his eyes: Give me a break. Even now, he knows exactly how to make me feel like a twelve-year-old who still can’t read a clock.

“People wait for years on kidney transplant lists. . . . You’re lucky enough to get one, and all of a sudden you’re Peter Fonda in Easy Rider?” He shakes his head, almost knocking me down with a sonic boom of disappointment. I think he’s more upset by the fact that I’m growing as a person—his little sister is changing from un- assuming, vanilla Leigh, with a spine like a warm Twizzler stick, to independent, empowered LEIGH, with a firm handshake and excellent posture. I once was lost, but now am found, thanks to a kind stranger named Larry Resnick.

But more on him later.

“James,” I say, “Peter Fonda had a motorcycle filled with drugs and money. I’ve got a Saturn with a kayak on the roof.” I also think of asking James if he would prefer I join a convent and sew my lips shut, but instead I say, “I’m tired of living vicariously through everyone else. I want my own life.” And really, that’s the meat of the matter. I want a life. I try to sound rational and convincing as I explain this to James, but I know if this conversation goes on much longer, my voice will grow higher and tighter until it sounds like I’m sucking helium. As the person who used to sign my report cards and once met with my ninth-grade principal to discuss the lewd cartoons I’d drawn in my math book to amuse friends, James has always had that power over me.

“What if you get sick again,” he says, challenging me. “Then what?”

“Then I find a hospital.” Simple logic, right? I think James is just afraid of change. Either that or being left behind with his wife, Marissa, who makes hot tuna casserole every Tuesday and leases a new beige Volvo every year. As if on cue, Marissa opens the back door. In a gauzy lilac robe, her hair in purple rollers, she looks like she’d be much more comfortable had she been named Mimi or Lady Bird.

“Everything alright?” she asks timidly.

James crosses his arms and glares at me. “Leigh still thinks she’s going to California.”

Marissa appears confused. “Oh?”

“I’m just taking a trip. People take them every day,” I say, trying to sound calm. Would James ever just let me breathe? I feel chest-deep in a vat of pudding and sinking fast.

“Leigh, you are not going alone.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m only going for two weeks,” I insist, but I don’t sound too convincing. I’m growing claustrophobic and sweaty, so I decide to just take action before I change my mind completely. “James,” I say with as much finality as I can muster, “I’ll call you from Sioux Falls.” With that, I slide into the driver’s seat, shift from park, and begin my journey. It’s one of those hyper, surreal moments where you might escape after all, where you think for a minute that you’ve actually convinced the Jehovah’s Witnesses peering through your front window that you’re not home, even though they clearly saw you streaking through the living room and diving behind the couch wearing nothing but a towel.

I leave James looking hurt and perplexed in the driveway, and suddenly I feel guilty. But not guilty enough to stay, and not guilty enough to quash my excitement.

I’m really doing it. Two left turns, a series of intersections, and one long graveyard on my right (which I drive past holding my breath, to add a day to my life), and I’m leaving Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Good-bye, Tucker’s Hamburgers, Gilles Frozen Custard, Lakeside Park, and the Miracle Mile, where a dozen people bought winning lottery tickets and thousands more bought losing ones. I wish I had a convertible, so I could wear Jackie O sunglasses and a scarf over my hair and carelessly toss something fluttery and symbolic into the wind—maybe a love letter from an old beau, or ancient to-do lists, or just bundles of money, because if I had a convertible and Jackie O sunglasses, it stands to reason that I’d have a much more exciting life involving a surplus of inherited or ill-gained money.

I turn my stereo up and Jefferson Starship assaults me: “We built this city . . . !” I rush to find something that won’t trigger my gag reflex. (Ah, yes: “London Calling,” by the Clash. For some, not just a band, but a way of life.) I suppress a delirious giggle. I’m really doing this. I begin to sing along and ease onto Highway 23. My MedicAlert bracelet glints in the sun, looking much more like a sterling silver Return to Tiffany™ heart tag bracelet than the old-school stainless steel plate the kid with diabetes wore around his wrist in fifth grade. Humming down the highway with the rising sun at my back, I snake a hand down my side to touch my scar. I can almost feel my new kidney jouncing around in me. It feels less like an alien jelly bean and more like an old pal. I decide to name it Larry. After its namesake. I am alone no longer.

I was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease when I was twenty-two, but hadn’t felt quite right since high school, really. I spent my late teens like an extra from the set of Flowers in the Attic: pale, fragile, dark half-moons under my eyes. I napped often. You’d have thought I grew up on melba toast dusted with arsenic. It wasn’t until my brief stint in college that anyone had a clue what was going on inside of me. The over...

Customer Reviews

You won't regret it.
I picked Driving Sideways up on a whim and am incredibly glad I did. Leigh Fielding is an endearing, snarky, down-to-earth character who embarks on a road trip to get a new lease on life after receiving a kidney transplant. Over the past few years she has lived with her brother and his wife and has trudged through a limited life of hospitals, medicine and careful eating. With a new kidney, she leaves her brother's care to find her mother and to hopefully receive some long-awaited answers.

Leigh soon discovers that nothing goes as planned and when things go from exciting to hilarious to disappointing, she realizes there are alternate routes to living a fulfilled life.

From S. Krishna's Books
Twenty-eight-year-old Leigh Fielding has a new chance at life thanks to Larry Resnick, a man she's never met - or more precisely, thanks to Larry's kidney. After five years on dialysis, Leigh is given the gift of a new kidney and a renewed sense of optimism; after all, for a long time she thought she wouldn't see her thirtieth birthday. Inspired by Larry and his gift, Leigh does what anyone who has been hooked up to a machine three days a week would want to do - she gets out of her hometown of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

A road trip seems like the perfect way to start her new life. Planning out stops along the way (visiting friends Meg and Jillian, dropping in unannounced on Larry's grandmother to thank her for his gift and find out more about him), her ultimate destination is California. There her mother disappeared to when she left Leigh, her brother, James, and their father, who killed himself about a year later. However, along the way, something unexpected happens - Leigh picks up a hitchhiker. Seventeen-year-old Denise is a runaway from her foster home, hiding from a bad boyfriend. She asks Leigh to take her along to California and Leigh, feeling daring with her new lease on life, agrees to the companionship, though she doesn't entirely trust Denise. Together they embark on a hilarious and unforgettable journey across the country and find parts of themselves scattered along the way.

Driving Sideways is charming, insightful, and wonderfully funny. It is a story of self-discovery and loss, of hope and despair. The characters are incredibly well-written, and it is easy to sympathize with their stories. Though Leigh has had renal failure, she doesn't dwell in this place of darkness. Instead, she is irreverent and whimsical, only wanting the chance to live. After all, the doctors told her that the new kidney isn't a cure - it is simply a treatment that may fail in time. Leigh is careful with her new kidney, not taking any chances that might put Larry in harm's way. Sometimes that is the hardest part of reading a novel like this, watching the protagonist head down a spiral that is certain to lead to their own destruction (I can have just one drink, I'll be okay). The reader sees it, the other characters in the book see it, yet it happens anyways - frustrating and unpleasant to read. The fact that Leigh actually takes her sickness seriously and, while tempted, does not stray from her strict diet and healthy lifestyle is refreshing and a welcome change in novels in general.

The most appealing aspect of Driving Sideways would have to be Jess Riley's sense of humor. The novel is witty and fun with more than a few laugh-out-loud parts. Though it is about a very long roadtrip, the narrative itself doesn't drag butt goes quickly; Riley keeps readers interested (and amused) through the twists and turns of the roads that Leigh finds herself upon. The novel has a lot of heart and emotion, but it is never cheesy or sappy, demonstrative of Riley's talent as a writer. She manages to touch her readers and evoke the emotions she wants them to feel without telling them to do so. It is a mark of her ability to write sympathetic and believable characters that the reader really does care about.

Driving Sideways is a winning debut novel and is a wonderful showcase of Jess Riley's talent as an author. Whether her next book is a sequel to her first or an entirely new story, I will be first in line to see what else she can do with her impressive capacity as a writer.

Originally published at Curled Up With a Good Book

Touching and wonderful
love Young Adult novels with a message and this book, Driving Sideways, written by Jess Riley rates right up there.First off, I loved the cover - simple - but yet sends the message of a free summer! road trip - just having a great time (ah, the good old days :)

Driving Sideways has a wonderful premise; Leigh has been diagnosed with Polycystic Kidney Disease ( I have to admit that I had never heard of this before) and although it is scary and serious, Leigh managest to get a kidney transplant from a donor who has died. Now, after rehabilitation and the blessing of her doctor, Leigh has decided to take a roadtrip - with a multi purpose, which includes meeting up with an ex-boyfriend, meeting up with her best friend in an attempt to talk some sense into her, meeting up with the family of her kidney donor and meeting up with her mother, who deserted Leigh when she was but a child.
This is definitely a coming of age novel which is absolutely beautifully written. Leigh is an incredibly likeable character who is engaging and extremely fun to read. As you travel, on the road trip alongside of her, you will feel as though you are actually sitting in the car next to her. Author Jess Riley has a knack for describing scenery and situations that make it easy to picture them in your head and Leigh has a knack for getting herself into the strangest situations.
At the end of this novel, Leigh will find some closure and she will also find a level of maturity that she was probably not expecting to find.

I loved, loved this book and I recommend it as a feel good read.