It's the late 1960's in Dublin and the driving test has just been introduced to Ireland, unleashing a tsunami of new and unregulated driving schools on the city. Jim's mother drags him into one of the new schools in hope that he will pass his driving test and become her chauffeur. In the chaotic world of the school, Jim finds himself recruited as an instructor, even though he has not passed his own driving test.

Despite his early successes at exploiting the vulnerability of the learner drivers who find themselves caught in a system from which they cannot escape, he soon begins to question the school's ethos and methods. 

Thus begins, for the nineteen year old, a hectic journey from naivety, through cynicism and thieving opportunism, to depression, alcoholism and eventually a belated redemption.