YA Review: Notes from the Midnight Driver

Sonnenblick, J. (2006). Notes from the Midnight Driver. New York: Scholastic Inc.



This book is a wild and hilarious ride with high school junior Alex Gregory through a minefield of topics such as teen drunk driving, divorce, emphysema and estranged families. “As insane as it looks in retrospect, I was fully convinced on that particular Friday evening last September that stealing my mom’s car and storming my dad’s house was a brilliant plan.” (p. 1). Alex goes on to crash his mom’s car into a neighbor’s lawn gnome, get arrested for drunk driving and ultimately end up having to serve 100 hours of community service at a local nursing home.

What makes this story such a rollicking good time is that Alex is telling us the story – uncensored. The story rolls right along and we are inside Alex’s head and get to hear all of his thoughts and comments about everything and everyone he encounters. Occasionally the story is told through letters that Alex writes to the Judge overseeing his sentence, but mostly it is told straight-up by Alex himself. If you enjoyed Sonnenblick’s “Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie,” you will appreciate the similar style and irreverent humor in this story along with the experience of being inside the mind of an adolescent boy. Alex is not the most popular kid at school, he is no star athlete or musical prodigy, instead he is just a regular guy and the humor and the charm of this story comes from his honesty and his blundering attempts to befriend and assist the curmudgeonly Solomon Lewis, a resident at the nursing home where he is assigned. In the midst of all the regular pressures of high school and the added strains of his parents’ acrimonious divorce, Alex pours a lot of his time and energy into playing the guitar. His interest in and commitment to music becomes an integral part of the story as the book progresses.

Notes from the Midnight Driver is very funny, but it is not merely funny. In an interview recorded at the end of the paperback edition of the book, the author says, "the whole thing popped into my head, pretty much complete.... the idea came to me: What if a really good kid did something bad, and then refused to take responsibility?" To some degree, Sonnenblick is attempting to teach a few lessons with this book which might have put me off if the story wasn't so much fun to read.