Listen to a sample
Baby Driver
- Author
- Jan Kerouac
- Narrator
- Kim Ramirez
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 30 May 2026
- Run Time
- 11 hours 1 minute
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
The first novel by Jan Kerouac, daughter of Jack—a thrilling work of autobiographical fiction that captures with inspired detail a life driven by adventure, drugs, far-flung travel, and like her father, a relentless quest for pure experience.
“Was it January or February? The coconut fronds waving, shining like green hair in the sun, gave no clue.” Fifteen-year-old Jan is pregnant, gamely living off rice and whatever fish her boyfriend John can catch in Yelapa, Mexico. Her sojourn there–both thrilling and heartbreaking–marks the beginning of a life of restless wandering. Jan Kerouac, the only child of Jack Kerouac, first published her autobiographical novel Baby Driver in 1981. Fearless and frank, Baby Driver is the story of a difficult childhood, marked by maternal warmth and paternal disregard, and of the heady freedom and precariousness of self-reliance.
Critics Review
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“If [Jack] Kerouac sometimes put a spiritual gloss on poverty and life on the edge, his daughter offered an unflinching vision.”
The Guardian
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“What’s rolled out in this ‘autobiographical novel’ is Jan’s childhood on the Lower East Side with gritty, hard-pressed mom Joan, and then her fast track into the 1960s demimonde: drugs, petty theft, drugs, Bellevue, drugs, juvenile detention centers, drugs. An older Jan in her twenties is also aired: commune life in New Mexico; working as a hooker; being a heroin-shooter; peyote session; a South American odyssey in the company of a scary psychopath.”
Publishers Weekly
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Jan Kerouac
- Narrator
- Kim Ramirez
- Duration
- 11 hours 1 minute
- Release Date
- 30 May 2026
- ISBN
- 9798228760622
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Narrative theme: Coming of age, Fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Sense of place
Synopsis
The first novel by Jan Kerouac, daughter of Jack—a thrilling work of autobiographical fiction that captures with inspired detail a life driven by adventure, drugs, far-flung travel, and like her father, a relentless quest for pure experience.“Was it January or February? The coconut fronds waving, shining like green hair in the sun, gave no clue.” Fifteen-year-old Jan is pregnant, gamely living off rice and whatever fish her boyfriend John can catch in Yelapa, Mexico. Her sojourn there–both thrilling and heartbreaking–marks the beginning of a life of restless wandering. Jan Kerouac, the only child of Jack Kerouac, first published her autobiographical novel Baby Driver in 1981. Fearless and frank, Baby Driver is the story of a difficult childhood, marked by maternal warmth and paternal disregard, and of the heady freedom and precariousness of self-reliance.
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