Drive By is hot throbbing noir twisted into a mobius strip of flashing lights, unreliable narration, and polyphonic intertext. Through sea and storm, our pizzeria diva Clarice goes along with what comes along, all the while shielding a secret in her nagging past—of which, ‘already the details were slipping beyond her grasp.’ In this distilled, unsettling novella, Claudia La Rocco writes into the mythologies of women’s lives, disentangling the violent shock of awakening. Drive By’s glancing critique of storytelling bends memory into a wondrous bouquet of reckonings. What just happened? The last page sent me right back to the first, ready to read it all over again.” – Maxe Crandall, author of The Nancy Reagan Collection

Drive By / Claudia La Rocco / December 1, 2022 / 5½ x 7 inches, 48 pages, paper cover, 11,407 words / Printed by machine and bound by hand in San Francisco, California

The first printed publication from Smooth Friend, Drive By is a sort of homecoming story, told in tumbling fragments of science fiction, art criticism, and strange encounters, anchored to shore by La Rocco’s irreverent and humane cast of characters, funny dialogue, and resonant sense of place. Art and design by Elisabeth Nicula.

Order online / also available at Et al. books in San Francisco