Genre Fiction
![Martin Riker - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_martin_riker.jpg)
The Guest Lecture
With "a voice as clear, sincere, and wry as any I've read in current American fiction" (Joshua Cohen), Martin Riker's poignant and startlingly original novel asks how to foster a brave mind in anxious times, following a newly jobless academic rehearsing a speech on John Maynard Keynes for a surprising audience
In a hotel room in the middle of the night, Abby, a young feminist economist, lies awake next to her sleeping husband and daughter. Anxious that she is grossly underprepared for a talk she is presenting tomorrow on optimism and John Maynard Keynes, she has resolved to practice by using an ancient rhetorical method of assigning parts of her speech to different rooms in her house and has brought along a comforting albeit imaginary companion to keep her on track-Keynes himself.
Yet as she wanders with increasing alarm through the rooms of her own consciousness, Abby finds herself straying from her prepared remarks on economic history, utopia, and Keynes's pragmatic optimism. A lapsed optimist herself, she has been struggling under the burden of supporting a family in an increasingly hostile America after being denied tenure at the university where she teaches. Confronting her own future at a time of global darkness, Abby undertakes a quest through her memories to ideas hidden in the corners of her mind-a piecemeal intellectual history from Cicero to Lewis Carroll to Queen Latifah-as she asks what a better world would look like if we told our stories with more honest and more hopeful imaginations.
With warm intellect, playful curiosity, and an infectious voice, Martin Riker acutely animates the novel of ideas with a beating heart and turns one woman's midnight crisis into the performance of a lifetime.
In a hotel room in the middle of the night, Abby, a young feminist economist, lies awake next to her sleeping husband and daughter. Anxious that she is grossly underprepared for a talk she is presenting tomorrow on optimism and John Maynard Keynes, she has resolved to practice by using an ancient rhetorical method of assigning parts of her speech to different rooms in her house and has brought along a comforting albeit imaginary companion to keep her on track-Keynes himself.
Yet as she wanders with increasing alarm through the rooms of her own consciousness, Abby finds herself straying from her prepared remarks on economic history, utopia, and Keynes's pragmatic optimism. A lapsed optimist herself, she has been struggling under the burden of supporting a family in an increasingly hostile America after being denied tenure at the university where she teaches. Confronting her own future at a time of global darkness, Abby undertakes a quest through her memories to ideas hidden in the corners of her mind-a piecemeal intellectual history from Cicero to Lewis Carroll to Queen Latifah-as she asks what a better world would look like if we told our stories with more honest and more hopeful imaginations.
With warm intellect, playful curiosity, and an infectious voice, Martin Riker acutely animates the novel of ideas with a beating heart and turns one woman's midnight crisis into the performance of a lifetime.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for The Guest Lecture:
An Indie Next Selection
Named a Most Anticipated Book by The Millions, Bustle, and Powell's
"Martin Riker's light, charming and shyly philosophical second novel, The Guest Lecture, details a tortured night inside the head of a young academic, an economist named Abigail . . . Riker pulls it off because he's observant, and he has a grainy, semi-comic feel for what angst and failure really feel like. His antinovel resembles books that split commentary on a writer with more personal material-books like Julian Barnes's novel Flaubert's Parrotand Geoff Dyer's quasi-biography of D.H. Lawrence, Out of Sheer Rage . . . In the vein of Nicholson Baker, Riker is a noticer . . . In Riker's hands, Abigail is good company."-Dwight Garner,New York Times "If you've ever spent a sleepless night worrying about your career, your family and the gross inequality of American life, then chances are you will love, or at least relate to, The Guest Lecture . . . A quirky second novel of breathtaking genius."-Ann Levin, AP News
"Mesmerizing . . . The Guest Lecture is a novel of ideas and feelings, of feelings about ideas and ideas about feelings. If this lecture will be her final word on her subject, Abigail naturally wants to express everything. Living in ‘an era of overload' can feel like a rush, and the book doesn't deny us that. It bursts with philosophy, jokes, factoids, tense academic social dynamics and fragments of formative memory."-Maggie Lange, Washington Post
"Martin Riker's The Guest Lecture is like Ducks, Newburyport meets The Good Placemeets The Chair, which is to say it's an incredible book that you need to read right now . . . what follows is a bunch of gleeful tangents, diversions, deep dives i...
An Indie Next Selection
Named a Most Anticipated Book by The Millions, Bustle, and Powell's
"Martin Riker's light, charming and shyly philosophical second novel, The Guest Lecture, details a tortured night inside the head of a young academic, an economist named Abigail . . . Riker pulls it off because he's observant, and he has a grainy, semi-comic feel for what angst and failure really feel like. His antinovel resembles books that split commentary on a writer with more personal material-books like Julian Barnes's novel Flaubert's Parrotand Geoff Dyer's quasi-biography of D.H. Lawrence, Out of Sheer Rage . . . In the vein of Nicholson Baker, Riker is a noticer . . . In Riker's hands, Abigail is good company."-Dwight Garner,New York Times "If you've ever spent a sleepless night worrying about your career, your family and the gross inequality of American life, then chances are you will love, or at least relate to, The Guest Lecture . . . A quirky second novel of breathtaking genius."-Ann Levin, AP News
"Mesmerizing . . . The Guest Lecture is a novel of ideas and feelings, of feelings about ideas and ideas about feelings. If this lecture will be her final word on her subject, Abigail naturally wants to express everything. Living in ‘an era of overload' can feel like a rush, and the book doesn't deny us that. It bursts with philosophy, jokes, factoids, tense academic social dynamics and fragments of formative memory."-Maggie Lange, Washington Post
"Martin Riker's The Guest Lecture is like Ducks, Newburyport meets The Good Placemeets The Chair, which is to say it's an incredible book that you need to read right now . . . what follows is a bunch of gleeful tangents, diversions, deep dives i...
Readers Top Reviews
kathleen g
Clever to be sure but also challenging and frankly not fun. Abby, who has just been turned down for tenure, lies awake fretting about a lecture she's meant to give on John Maynard Keynes, who then turns up in her mind to walk with her though the rooms of her house. This pings between philosophy and economics with stops along the way to wax on about all sorts of other things. I get that others will enjoy this but I didn't like Abby, felt lectured to (yes, that's the idea), and wanted it to end. Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.
James B
Abby lies awake in a hotel bed, with her sleeping husband and young daughter next to her, but in her mind she is traveling from room to room in their house as she uses each room as a device to memorize a speech she’s giving tomorrow on John Maynard Keynes. As she goes through the speech, she keeps getting distracted by her own life, especially her failed success of becoming a tenured professor and what that means for her family’s future. Plus the spirit of Keynes keeps interrupting her thoughts. This is such a thoughtful and charming night of a soul not altogether at ease.
