An Order of Fries and a Quarter Pound of Existential Dread

On Drive-Thru by Bob Freville

(Disclaimers: This review will contain minor spoilers. Also, Freville was once my editor on a site I wrote for, and I did the cover art and typesetting for his book The Proud and the Dumb. He sent me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.)

One of my favorite story set-ups, when it’s done right, is a very simple one; throw a bunch of characters in an area they can’t leave and watch them work it out. As simple as it sounds, it’s hard to pull off well. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for action, requires a keen ear for dialogue, and a good understanding of human psychology. Drive-Thru, the latest novel from author and journalist Bob Freville, has all of this.

The unnamed narrator of the novel and his girlfriend Chantal pull into an unnamed fast food joint to get a meal from the drive-thru. When the drive-thru shows itself to be on the fritz, they go inside. There, they find themselves trapped in the restaurant with a drug dealer, his gorgeous girlfriend, a young wanna-be gangsta, and his rich kid best friend. Seemingly strangers at first, they soon learn that they have connections to each other and to the restaurant they’re stuck inside.

The narrator is a thoroughly detestable character, and not even in an endearing way. From the beginning, he’s a complete hypocrite who complains about fast food as he’s pulling into the drive-thru. He hides his sexism and racism behind pseudo-intellectual sophistry, he makes everyone around him miserable just for kicks, and despite all his pretensions, he’s little more than a hack writer who churns out internet clickbait about guns and nootropics (Freville himself as written about nootropics before, so there seems to be some self-deprecation here).

As annoying as this character is, he isn’t framed as being a good guy, even as he tries make himself such. One of the most satisfying scenes is when he gets a chance to hook up with Sabrina, the drug dealer’s girlfriend, and it comes to an abrupt end when she shits on his face while he eats her ass. The novel can be very funny at times.

The narrator’s dorm room nihilism is shown not only to be a dead-end, but actively harmful. He’s capable of understanding societal problems, but only when he sees it as a benefit to himself. He dismisses the problems faced by his girlfriend and Gabe, a black drug dealer, being far more interested in showing his intellectual superiority than anything else.

This even applies to the immediate problem of being trapped inside the restaurant. The narrator is more than happy to throw Chantal under the bus when he believes it will benefit him, such as revealing that she’s a recovering heroin addict who used to buy from Gabe and that she’s a health inspector who had previously worked grading the very restaurant they’re stuck in. These just bring tensions to a boiling point, but the narrator clearly believes it will help, even if it’s at the expense of his own girlfriend.

Some of the more fascinating chapters are ones that seem to move away from the narrator’s perspective and to someone else. This includes one that reads as a satirical essay about the history of the fast food drive-thru and one that reads like a scientist observing a fight between Gabe and the narrator. By the end, it’s up in the air if these are really from someone else’s perspective or the narrator dissociating to deal with his situation.

In spite of the often mean-spirited humor and the borderline irredeemable narrator, the novel is ultimately a deeply empathetic look at the problems of modern American society. Especially those faced by marginalized people. For all their faults, every character is a well-drawn, three-dimensional human with depth. When things get horrifically serious, it becomes tragic. The narrator’s constant assertions that they’re part of a greater machine prove to be true, but he finds himself unable to do anything with this knowledge in the end, and he ultimately has no idea how to cope with this.

Drive-Thru is a funny and entertaining dark satire of modern America. Freville does horrible things to horrible people, but still makes you feel for them in the end. Instead of going through the McDonald’s drive-thru, make dinner at home and read this novel instead.

Buy Drive-Thru by Bob Freville here. Read his Substack, The Modern Custodian, here.