Blind Speed: A Novel
Sweet, bumbling, and besieged by feelings of cosmic doubt, first-time novelist Barkan’s protagonist joins the long line of hapless male protagonists so popular in American fiction and movies. Once a drummer in an almost successful band, he now stands to lose his teaching job at a community college. To make matters worse, Paul is the slacker in a family of vicious overachievers. One brother was killed on 9/11; the other is a famous Harvard-based lawyer now running for Congress. The good news is that Zoe has agreed to marry him, but Paul feels doomed by an alarming palm-reading session. His ensuing misadventures are ludicrous, barbed, and funny, including the worst-ever spoiled wedding and a weird entanglement with a group of fake ecoterrorists. Paul is likable, and Barkan’s satiric comparisons of the 1990s boom time with this misbegotten age have zing. Too bad the plot is so raggedy and Barkan’s approach to environmental matters is so muddled. Still, this is a smart, comedic, and heartfelt attack on hypocrisy and greed that celebrates good guys, however much they flail and flounder. --Donna Seaman