The Driveway Has Two Sides by Sara Marchant – #ABookADayInMay – Day 20

I’m continuing my reading of Fairlight Moderns with The Driveway Has Two Sides (2018) by Sara Marchant – with another lovely cover illustration by Sam Kalda. Honestly, I can’t speak highly enough of these editions. Their size and feel and the care taken over them are all wonderful.

And thankfully, in this case, the book is also excellent! I really enjoyed The Driveway Has Two Sides, and it has made me interested to read more by Marchant.

It’s set on an East Coast Island, onto which moves Delilah. She is a young woman who is, we are told quite often, beautiful and sexy (if the book were written by a man, I’d have questioned how often we needed to know that!) On the small island, any outsider is treated with a little suspicion – and she clearly doesn’t want to be at the heart of the community. But she shares her driveway with the yellow house next door, and the resident there is even less keen to communicate. They can be recluses near each other.

If you looked underneath you noticed certain signs that all was not as it should be. The man next door hardly ever went out and no visitors ever went in. When he did go, it was in his own car that he kept in the garage at the front of the shared drive, and he left the island on the ferry. He made no overtures of neighborliness to the girl, and to the villagers’ eyes she seemed either uninterested or maybe not even aware of his existence. This was odd because they shared a driveway.

But then Delilah gets to know the local sheriff, Ted. He is a widow, and I particularly enjoyed the detail that local women brought him meals a lot… until he saw Delilah for the third time, and the overtures and offerings ceased. All small communities are the same! Ted’s kindness starts to wear Delilah down a little… leaving her with three men to decide between. Ted, the mysterious man next door, and the married boyfriend who is paying for her home.

That makes The Driveway Has Two Sides sound like a romcom, and it probably doesn’t help that the Amazon subheading is ‘the perfect escapist beach read’. Because this novella is so much more interesting than a ‘who will she choose?’ plot (though I have to admit that Ted is one of the lovelier characters I’ve come across in a while). I found it much more a calming, beautiful look at someone trying to forge a home – and being gradually brought into contact with other people. Delilah is particularly interested in gardening, and over the course of the short book she manages to breath life into the gardens at the front and back of the house – causing gossip among the locals, and also inadvertently opening up a connection with her neighbour.

There are a few bigger ‘plotty’ moments, including a twist or two, and they did feel a bit like they belonged to a different, longer novel. The Driveway Has Two Sides was on firmer ground when it was about the subtle, poignant shifts in relationships between two people that happen almost reluctantly. I found it a beautiful, absorbing little book, creating a community I felt I knew well. Whether or not it had the ending I was hoping for is another question, but the fact I was invested in the outcome is a strong endorsement…