Wayne Tefs’ eighth novel starts out in a bar at the Winnipeg airport on the afternoon of Good Friday. Clinton Dokic is waiting for a flight home to Thompson, Manitoba, where his wife is about to give birth to their first child. The flight is repeatedly delayed by snow, and to pass the time, Clinton, his younger brother Darryl, and their mother drink heavily and pick at a plate of french fries. When the blizzard finally shuts the airport down, Clinton isn’t about to let that keep him from getting home. Fortunately, Darryl happens to own a Jeep. Of course, driving 700 kilometres on deserted highways in the middle of a blizzard is a bad idea, but, as Darryl notes, at least they don’t have to do it sober.

The drunken, ill-advised road trip is not exactly a new literary form, but 4 X 4 is not the typical road novel. Tefs manages to avoid the clichés and keeps the novel from descending into picaresque. Instead, he focuses on the road and on the enforced togetherness of a long trip that becomes increasingly oppressive in the atmosphere of secrets that each family member is keeping from the others.

This polyphonic novel is told in the rotating voices of each of the three people in the car as well as that of Clinton’s wife, Kaly, who is waiting alone in Thompson. As each character speaks, it becomes clear that there is even more isolating the members of this family from one another than they realize. Something as simple as a car trip, or the birth of a child, is not going to bond them.

As the Jeep makes its way through northern Manitoba, Darryl reflects on the fact that even today there are still a few places on Earth that have not been formally surveyed. Cartographers call these places “sleeping beauties.” They are not unexplored places, just places that are not thoroughly understood; they are places where surprise is still possible if you look hard enough. It’s a comforting thought that applies not only to geography, but to the most intimate relationships. It is a beautiful metaphor that perfectly sums up the novel.