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The Guest Lecture
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 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.
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 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.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2023
160 people are currently reading
10579 people want to read
About the author
Martin Riker
6 books51 followersMartin Riker is author of the novel Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return (2018), which was favorably reviewed in the New Yorker, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. His novel The Guest Lecture will be published by Grove in 2023. As a literary critic, Riker has written on contemporary fiction and literature in translation for such publications as New York Times Book Review, Wall Street Journal, London Review of Books, TLS, Paris Review Daily, and The Guardian. He served for almost a decade as Associate Director of the nonprofit publishing house Dalkey Archive Press, and as an editor for the periodicals The Review of Contemporary Fiction and CONTEXT: A Forum for Literary Arts and Culture. In 2010, he and his wife, Danielle Dutton, co-founded the feminist publishing house Dorothy. Dorothy has garnered international praise for publishing innovative writers such as Marguerite Duras, Leonora Carrington, and Renee Gladman, and for launching the careers of acclaimed contemporary writers such as Nell Zink, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, and Jen George.
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May 8, 2024every book has this exact cover
October 20, 2022
The Guest Lecture is a book just bursting with ideas and it’s relayed in a stream-of-consciousness form. It may not be for everyone – certainly not for readers who gravitate to action-filled plots. But it certainly was for me.
At the heart of the novel is Abby, an economist who has just been denied tenure because a book she wrote that went viral has been deemed derivative. The following day, she has been invited to deliver a guest lecture to a room full of people, and she’s floundering. She views herself as a failed academic with an inconsequential book and a bleak future.
And then she receives a visitation by none other than John Maynard Keynes, the very economist she will be speaking about in the lecture. What follows is a “memory palace” tour though each room of her house, where she assigns segments of the speech. Keynes is right there with her, prodding her on.
The result is a kaleidoscope of insights, most stemming from Keynes’ Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (the New Deal was lifted directly from that playbook). What did Keynes really wish to communicate? Are those in power justifying whatever schemes served their own needs, sullying the meaning of his long-fought plans for government investment and public works? What would you choose to do in a Keynesian utopian alternative universe? (I was surprised to read what utopian really means.)
Perhaps, Abby postulates, everyone is in the wrong world at the wrong time. Is failure contained in the greatest success? What is a way of life more than an attitude of ideas? In addition to Abby’s metaphysical musings, she enters the realm of memory, encompassing her childhood, the first almost-lover who influenced her, her husband (who appreciates work for its own sake) and young daughter, her misplaced career ambitions, and more. Plus expect to find tie-ins to everyone from Lewis Carroll to Marshall McLuhan. It’s ambitious, yes, and it will get you thinking. Thanks to Black Cat, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.
At the heart of the novel is Abby, an economist who has just been denied tenure because a book she wrote that went viral has been deemed derivative. The following day, she has been invited to deliver a guest lecture to a room full of people, and she’s floundering. She views herself as a failed academic with an inconsequential book and a bleak future.
And then she receives a visitation by none other than John Maynard Keynes, the very economist she will be speaking about in the lecture. What follows is a “memory palace” tour though each room of her house, where she assigns segments of the speech. Keynes is right there with her, prodding her on.
The result is a kaleidoscope of insights, most stemming from Keynes’ Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (the New Deal was lifted directly from that playbook). What did Keynes really wish to communicate? Are those in power justifying whatever schemes served their own needs, sullying the meaning of his long-fought plans for government investment and public works? What would you choose to do in a Keynesian utopian alternative universe? (I was surprised to read what utopian really means.)
Perhaps, Abby postulates, everyone is in the wrong world at the wrong time. Is failure contained in the greatest success? What is a way of life more than an attitude of ideas? In addition to Abby’s metaphysical musings, she enters the realm of memory, encompassing her childhood, the first almost-lover who influenced her, her husband (who appreciates work for its own sake) and young daughter, her misplaced career ambitions, and more. Plus expect to find tie-ins to everyone from Lewis Carroll to Marshall McLuhan. It’s ambitious, yes, and it will get you thinking. Thanks to Black Cat, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.
December 8, 2022
4.5 rounded down
The Guest Lecture has an intriguing premise: a woman lies in bed awake in a hotel room with her daughter and husband alongside her, unable to sleep and ruminating on the lecture she has to give on John Maynard Keynes in the morning. The format is a stream of consciousness, guided by mental journeys to different rooms in her house (a trick used to memorise the speech for her lecture).
I was worried this concept would be too contrived or the execution a bit too experimental or inaccessible for my liking, but it was almost perfectly executed. Abby, our protagonist, reflects on the main relationships in her life, her failure to gain tenure, and her thoughts on Keynes - travelling seamlessly between themes and topics. This novel stood out to me as being totally different from anything I've read in a while, highly recommended!
Thank you Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
The Guest Lecture has an intriguing premise: a woman lies in bed awake in a hotel room with her daughter and husband alongside her, unable to sleep and ruminating on the lecture she has to give on John Maynard Keynes in the morning. The format is a stream of consciousness, guided by mental journeys to different rooms in her house (a trick used to memorise the speech for her lecture).
I was worried this concept would be too contrived or the execution a bit too experimental or inaccessible for my liking, but it was almost perfectly executed. Abby, our protagonist, reflects on the main relationships in her life, her failure to gain tenure, and her thoughts on Keynes - travelling seamlessly between themes and topics. This novel stood out to me as being totally different from anything I've read in a while, highly recommended!
Thank you Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
January 26, 2023
Most of the — first 48% of reading this book, I didn’t get along with the dry humor. I just found it dry. Academically pretentiously mind numbing dry — a little too cavalier, pompous and overbearingly uninteresting.
I skimmed the rest of the book— jumped to the end — to end the misery.
A couple of excerpts … (one’s I liked better than others)
[the blurb is fitting - well explained — but wasn’t fitting with me….simply a personal taste sort of thing]
“The end of our friendship did not happen all at once, or even quite ‘happen’ at all, so it seems that over the years I’ve come to think of it, as having a definite end point. A point long prior to her death, which it suddenly occurs to me, is probably why my memory ends our friendship earlier. To put safe distance between those two endings. To water down the finality”.
“When did I stop thinking of the past, Ali’s birth? Earlier? You close down that wing of your house to open up another. Yet I seem to recall being practically obsessed with my own past all through my twenties. All through my teens. It seems, when I look back on it, that the younger I was, the greater fascination I felt toward the various people, I had previously been. Nostalgia. Evaluate my memories much more, then. Too much”.
1.5 rating from me — just didn’t do anything for me.
I skimmed the rest of the book— jumped to the end — to end the misery.
A couple of excerpts … (one’s I liked better than others)
[the blurb is fitting - well explained — but wasn’t fitting with me….simply a personal taste sort of thing]
“The end of our friendship did not happen all at once, or even quite ‘happen’ at all, so it seems that over the years I’ve come to think of it, as having a definite end point. A point long prior to her death, which it suddenly occurs to me, is probably why my memory ends our friendship earlier. To put safe distance between those two endings. To water down the finality”.
“When did I stop thinking of the past, Ali’s birth? Earlier? You close down that wing of your house to open up another. Yet I seem to recall being practically obsessed with my own past all through my twenties. All through my teens. It seems, when I look back on it, that the younger I was, the greater fascination I felt toward the various people, I had previously been. Nostalgia. Evaluate my memories much more, then. Too much”.
1.5 rating from me — just didn’t do anything for me.
February 27, 2023
This novel is a hot mess and it made me angry. I'm rounding up to 2 stars because I finished it and it is written well, even if it left me really questioning what Riker was doing, what point(s) he is actually making.
Why does Riker, an academic and co-founder of Dorothy, (what I see to be) "an award-winning feminist press dedicated to works of fiction or near fiction or writing about fiction," specifically by women, decide to write a novel, this novel, from a woman's POV? It's an odd choice but it gets even odder when he sets up the context that his protagonist, Abby, purportedly a feminist economist, has just been denied tenure for reasons that he suggests have misogynist and systemic (higher education/institutional) roots, only to drop both points like a hot potato never to return to them.
Instead, we are given a stream-of-consciousness wander through Abby's memories, from childhood onward, as she spends a tortured night of the soul practicing a lecture she's about to give about John Maynard Keynes and his Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, using the loci memorization technique while accompanied by Keynes himself. While Abby returns to the subject of her denial of tenure repeatedly, we never get any clarity on what really happened; although we do get a lot of self-blame. Mostly what we get is a picture of a woman who very likely has good reason to point the finger at and hold accountable the systems and colleagues who've failed her but who, instead, internalizes all that blame ... part of a well-entrenched pattern and long history of self-doubt, self-hate, deep anxieties, and profound social awkwardness.
As the night wears on, and as Abby becomes an increasingly unreliable narrator (i.e., what she says about herself comes to deviate from the picture we actually get of her), what starts as anxiety and self-doubt turns into a lack of self-insight that borders on self-delusion and grandiosity (borne, granted, of her deep insecurities); she is mean, petty, resentful (especially towards her husband), and she has a lust for money and fame that she denies having.
Desperate for clarity and relief, Abby works herself into knots (trying) to maintain a grasp on, perhaps even belief in, her thesis about Keynes and his "pragmatic optimism" while becoming (or revealing herself to be) increasingly irrational and pessimistic.
It's possible (maybe?) that Riker is making the point that the system and the world has made mincemeat of this woman and that is what capitalist oppression does to idealists (or pragmatic optimists). I don't think there's a lot of textual support for this reading, but I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt here.
It's also possible that there is some deeper irony at play that I've missed entirely because I don't know thing one about J.M. Keynes or Keynesian economics or Keynes' Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren or his pragmatic optimism.
Despite my misgivings, I kept reading (listening) because, pragmatic optimist that I am, I was still thinking that Riker would lead me to some kind of conclusion or at least make a clear point -- even if not founded on Abby's own successful detangling of her, by now hopelessly convoluted, thoughts and feelings.
But by the end, everything tanked for me.
I'm fine with, and generally quite like, novels that set up a premise only to subvert it and make a different point altogether. I'm also fine with stream of consciousness and deep interior monologue, even with a meandering, unreliable and unlikeable narrator (in fact, all the better). What I'm not okay with is what this novel seems to do: combine both, leaving us with no sense of what the point is or that we can trust either the protagonist or the author to lead us to it.
And what I'm REALLY not okay with is that, despite all my sympathy for Abby, my eagerness to take her side against the very real systemic and sexist barriers she faces, facing the same anxieties about the kind of world we live in and the scariness of the future, Abby ends up being quite dislikable. Let me state unequivocally that I don't dislike the novel because its protagonist is unlikeable -- I am not that shallow a reader or critic and I have a great deal of distaste for the current trend that I see where people dismiss entire novels because they "can't relate to" the main character.
No, what I object to here (and anywhere) is that this is a clear authorial choice: to place the locus for all the blame entirely within Abby, and then to confirm that it belongs there because she is flawed and unlikeable. Riker leaves us with no other conclusion than that Abby is, probably, the architect of her own misfortune -- and then he pulls out (I think?) the trope of women's madness to explain ... something. He leaves her powerless against the clear sexism and injustice she faces, reinforcing it with the end scene This strikes me as not just poorly conceived but deeply misogynistic.
I ask myself: would a woman have written Abby this way? Would Riker have written the novel this way had he made his protagonist a man?
Bah.
Read with much conviction (although I wasn't convinced) and enthusiasm by Vanessa Johansson.
Why does Riker, an academic and co-founder of Dorothy, (what I see to be) "an award-winning feminist press dedicated to works of fiction or near fiction or writing about fiction," specifically by women, decide to write a novel, this novel, from a woman's POV? It's an odd choice but it gets even odder when he sets up the context that his protagonist, Abby, purportedly a feminist economist, has just been denied tenure for reasons that he suggests have misogynist and systemic (higher education/institutional) roots, only to drop both points like a hot potato never to return to them.
Instead, we are given a stream-of-consciousness wander through Abby's memories, from childhood onward, as she spends a tortured night of the soul practicing a lecture she's about to give about John Maynard Keynes and his Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, using the loci memorization technique while accompanied by Keynes himself. While Abby returns to the subject of her denial of tenure repeatedly, we never get any clarity on what really happened; although we do get a lot of self-blame. Mostly what we get is a picture of a woman who very likely has good reason to point the finger at and hold accountable the systems and colleagues who've failed her but who, instead, internalizes all that blame ... part of a well-entrenched pattern and long history of self-doubt, self-hate, deep anxieties, and profound social awkwardness.
As the night wears on, and as Abby becomes an increasingly unreliable narrator (i.e., what she says about herself comes to deviate from the picture we actually get of her), what starts as anxiety and self-doubt turns into a lack of self-insight that borders on self-delusion and grandiosity (borne, granted, of her deep insecurities); she is mean, petty, resentful (especially towards her husband), and she has a lust for money and fame that she denies having.
Desperate for clarity and relief, Abby works herself into knots (trying) to maintain a grasp on, perhaps even belief in, her thesis about Keynes and his "pragmatic optimism" while becoming (or revealing herself to be) increasingly irrational and pessimistic.
It's possible (maybe?) that Riker is making the point that the system and the world has made mincemeat of this woman and that is what capitalist oppression does to idealists (or pragmatic optimists). I don't think there's a lot of textual support for this reading, but I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt here.
It's also possible that there is some deeper irony at play that I've missed entirely because I don't know thing one about J.M. Keynes or Keynesian economics or Keynes' Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren or his pragmatic optimism.
Despite my misgivings, I kept reading (listening) because, pragmatic optimist that I am, I was still thinking that Riker would lead me to some kind of conclusion or at least make a clear point -- even if not founded on Abby's own successful detangling of her, by now hopelessly convoluted, thoughts and feelings.
But by the end, everything tanked for me.
I'm fine with, and generally quite like, novels that set up a premise only to subvert it and make a different point altogether. I'm also fine with stream of consciousness and deep interior monologue, even with a meandering, unreliable and unlikeable narrator (in fact, all the better). What I'm not okay with is what this novel seems to do: combine both, leaving us with no sense of what the point is or that we can trust either the protagonist or the author to lead us to it.
And what I'm REALLY not okay with is that, despite all my sympathy for Abby, my eagerness to take her side against the very real systemic and sexist barriers she faces, facing the same anxieties about the kind of world we live in and the scariness of the future, Abby ends up being quite dislikable. Let me state unequivocally that I don't dislike the novel because its protagonist is unlikeable -- I am not that shallow a reader or critic and I have a great deal of distaste for the current trend that I see where people dismiss entire novels because they "can't relate to" the main character.
No, what I object to here (and anywhere) is that this is a clear authorial choice: to place the locus for all the blame entirely within Abby, and then to confirm that it belongs there because she is flawed and unlikeable. Riker leaves us with no other conclusion than that Abby is, probably, the architect of her own misfortune -- and then he pulls out (I think?) the trope of women's madness to explain ... something. He leaves her powerless against the clear sexism and injustice she faces, reinforcing it with the end scene This strikes me as not just poorly conceived but deeply misogynistic.
I ask myself: would a woman have written Abby this way? Would Riker have written the novel this way had he made his protagonist a man?
Bah.
Read with much conviction (although I wasn't convinced) and enthusiasm by Vanessa Johansson.
December 14, 2022
Abby, an economist who was denied tenure at her teaching job, spends the night before a guest lecture she has promised to give, experiencing endless “monkey mind” (as Buddhists would call it), or “extensive mental meandering” (as author Martin Riker calls it). Her dreaded lecture is supposed to be on John Maynard Keynes’s economic optimism for future generations, and the book uses a method for rehearsing a speech and remembering it by mentally traveling through the rooms of your house—associating the points or ideas you want to cover with specific places. And she wanders the rooms with Mr. Keynes.
Although I could identify with Abby’s insomnia and monkey mind—sometimes they were identical to my own—the recounting of the thoughts and weaving into them a life history didn’t work for me as a novel. For me, the book’s meandering just didn’t hold a compelling form.
I say this reluctantly since I did so identify with Abby.
Thanks to Grove Atlantic for the advanced reading copy.
Although I could identify with Abby’s insomnia and monkey mind—sometimes they were identical to my own—the recounting of the thoughts and weaving into them a life history didn’t work for me as a novel. For me, the book’s meandering just didn’t hold a compelling form.
I say this reluctantly since I did so identify with Abby.
Thanks to Grove Atlantic for the advanced reading copy.
May 6, 2023
This is a short book of ideas, intended to provide a bit of optimism in today’s world of worries. We spend the entire book in the head of a female professor who has just been denied tenure and must give a speech the next day. As she tries to sleep next to her husband and young daughter, her mind jumps from one topic to the next. Feeling unprepared for her talk, she decides to rehearse using an ancient mnemonic device of going from room to room in her house to organize the topics of her speech. To her initial surprise, she is accompanied in her thoughts by John Maynard Keynes, whose economic paper on Pragmatic Optimism is the primary subject of her lecture.
I am sure insomniacs will relate to her difficulty staying focused on her speech in her mental rehearsal. Her mind wanders to the problems in her life, what has gone wrong in the past, and her concerns about the future. All this takes place after the 2016 US Presidential election, which has added fuel to her fears. Her mind jumps to all manner of wide-ranging topics. I think the author’s employment of Keynes is helpful in bridging the gap between her personal concerns and the larger concerns of society.
This book will not be for everyone. It is definitely not for anyone looking for action. It is creative and covers ground not often found in fiction. Do not be put off by the idea of “economics” as a topic. It does not go into great detail about economics. You do not need to know much about Keynes’s theories – general familiarity will suffice. If you, like me, enjoy academic topics, unusual framing devices, and dry humor, give this one a go. As a bonus, it does feel rather optimistic in tone, which I found a nice change of pace.
I am sure insomniacs will relate to her difficulty staying focused on her speech in her mental rehearsal. Her mind wanders to the problems in her life, what has gone wrong in the past, and her concerns about the future. All this takes place after the 2016 US Presidential election, which has added fuel to her fears. Her mind jumps to all manner of wide-ranging topics. I think the author’s employment of Keynes is helpful in bridging the gap between her personal concerns and the larger concerns of society.
This book will not be for everyone. It is definitely not for anyone looking for action. It is creative and covers ground not often found in fiction. Do not be put off by the idea of “economics” as a topic. It does not go into great detail about economics. You do not need to know much about Keynes’s theories – general familiarity will suffice. If you, like me, enjoy academic topics, unusual framing devices, and dry humor, give this one a go. As a bonus, it does feel rather optimistic in tone, which I found a nice change of pace.
February 28, 2023
If you have an economics degree with a minor in philosophy than have I got the book for you
January 31, 2023
Abby can't sleep. She is lying awake in a hotel room, next to her daughter and husband, fretting about a guest lecture she has to hold tomorrow and that she just did not prepare. In an attempt to apply an ancient memorization technique, she walks through her family's home in her mind, attaching one topic of her talk to every room she is in. On that journey, she is joined by the (imaginary) legendary economist Keynes himself, both the topic of her talk and a powerful counterbalance to her increasingly spiraling mind. Together, they try to make the guest lecture work - and to make sense of Abby's unease, her dissatisfaction, her past mistakes and crumbling career, her sense of self, her life.
If you read "Keynes" and immediately thought "Ew, economics" please don't be put off. This is not a deep-dive into economic theory. "The Guest Lecture" is a tender and philosophical novel on what it means to be a woman in academia, how to deal with imposter syndrome, coming to terms with missed chances and living in a society that feels like it is diving headfirst into its own demise. It is thoughtful, dark, funny, hard-hitting and yet easy to read. As in: I read the 250 pages in one sitting and did not tire once. It is also a hopeful book. And we all need that, don't we.
So do yourself a favor and read it.
Five stars without question and a book I will forever cherish, reread, and keep close.
If you read "Keynes" and immediately thought "Ew, economics" please don't be put off. This is not a deep-dive into economic theory. "The Guest Lecture" is a tender and philosophical novel on what it means to be a woman in academia, how to deal with imposter syndrome, coming to terms with missed chances and living in a society that feels like it is diving headfirst into its own demise. It is thoughtful, dark, funny, hard-hitting and yet easy to read. As in: I read the 250 pages in one sitting and did not tire once. It is also a hopeful book. And we all need that, don't we.
So do yourself a favor and read it.
Five stars without question and a book I will forever cherish, reread, and keep close.
February 20, 2023
This one hit me right in the gut emotionally and then tickled my brain with its wit, observations, and sheer writing skill. Have I already read my favorite book of 2023? Stay tuned, and in the meantime, check out The Guest Lecture. 5/5
March 5, 2023
The anxious musings of a Keynesian Economist who has been passed over for tenure and has published a book about Keynes that is damningly reviewed as, “Derivative.” On the night before a talk she will give, she is joined in her dreams by Keynes as she practices the talk and reviews her own life.
Probably not for many, but as a non-tenure track professor and someone who majored in Econ back in the late 70s, I found it interesting.
Probably not for many, but as a non-tenure track professor and someone who majored in Econ back in the late 70s, I found it interesting.
April 1, 2023
I absolutely LOVED this
March 6, 2023
This is a meta-thesis-novel about economics and a teardown of academia.
A few sleepless hours the night before her talk, our guest lecturer is ruminating and stewing in anxiousness about the day ahead. She decides to use a technique from Ceos, to plan her speech in stages: delivering her opener inside her living room, walking across the corridor to get to the next part of her argument. The entire speech mapped across the familiar rooms of her house, delivered from her insomniac mind. A device, a rhetoric, a stage for the novel.
And it is an odd sort of book, Riker has a fully formed thesis in here about hope and the future largely revolving around John Keynes and his utopian, hopelessly optimistic (or is it?) essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren . Interwoven in this thesis, in ebbs and swells, is our lecturer's own voice.
Should she even be giving this talk, seeing as how her whole future is falling apart? What were the choices that brought her to this point? Is the predicament her fault or is it the Institution?
I don't think I'm doing justice to how fun this book is to read. I love nothing more than a solid piece of fiction that also teaches me things and it feels like Riker has done his homework here (granted I am not an economist nor philosopher). It's made me go pick up a couple of the non-fiction recommendations in his acknowledgments, which says something. The writing is personable, intelligent without being condescending, and lively - I read aloud some portions because I found them energising.
It's also a real, honest-to-god balm for an early career academic - think post-postdoc - jaded or getting closer to that, suffering a few minor disappointments and maybe a major one. Riker has captured so perfectly the neurotic, overly analytical tendencies of the optimistic academic met with their first big failure and my copy is littered with notes to come back to. It's a character study of a young female professor in the current state of academia as much as it is a study of this particular person.
Reading this was surreal at times, Riker somehow dug around in my head and put bits in a book. It has to go on my favourites list because, just like the others on that shelf, he has somehow managed to capture a snapshot of my life without us ever having met.
So, for me, a 5-star read. Maybe not for everyone? But if you like academia-based novels and you've lost your optimism, read it.
A few sleepless hours the night before her talk, our guest lecturer is ruminating and stewing in anxiousness about the day ahead. She decides to use a technique from Ceos, to plan her speech in stages: delivering her opener inside her living room, walking across the corridor to get to the next part of her argument. The entire speech mapped across the familiar rooms of her house, delivered from her insomniac mind. A device, a rhetoric, a stage for the novel.
And it is an odd sort of book, Riker has a fully formed thesis in here about hope and the future largely revolving around John Keynes and his utopian, hopelessly optimistic (or is it?) essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren . Interwoven in this thesis, in ebbs and swells, is our lecturer's own voice.
Should she even be giving this talk, seeing as how her whole future is falling apart? What were the choices that brought her to this point? Is the predicament her fault or is it the Institution?
I don't think I'm doing justice to how fun this book is to read. I love nothing more than a solid piece of fiction that also teaches me things and it feels like Riker has done his homework here (granted I am not an economist nor philosopher). It's made me go pick up a couple of the non-fiction recommendations in his acknowledgments, which says something. The writing is personable, intelligent without being condescending, and lively - I read aloud some portions because I found them energising.
It's also a real, honest-to-god balm for an early career academic - think post-postdoc - jaded or getting closer to that, suffering a few minor disappointments and maybe a major one. Riker has captured so perfectly the neurotic, overly analytical tendencies of the optimistic academic met with their first big failure and my copy is littered with notes to come back to. It's a character study of a young female professor in the current state of academia as much as it is a study of this particular person.
Reading this was surreal at times, Riker somehow dug around in my head and put bits in a book. It has to go on my favourites list because, just like the others on that shelf, he has somehow managed to capture a snapshot of my life without us ever having met.
So, for me, a 5-star read. Maybe not for everyone? But if you like academia-based novels and you've lost your optimism, read it.
January 6, 2024
I found this novel absorbing and thoughtful. It takes place across a single sleepless night for an economics professor nervous about a lecture on John Maynard Keynes she is to give in the morning. Sleeplessness allows Abby to range across her memories and relationships, attended by a spectral Keynes who chivvies her, perhaps threatening to take over her lecture—it is about him after all. What the author does wonderfully well is rendering Abby’s internal monologue entertainingly and with a realism that I recognized, all within the sleepless hours of one night. Amusing and philosophical.
March 8, 2023
First half is brilliant, loses steam though.
January 17, 2023
A simply masterful book. Riker takes what could’ve been an essay and seamlessly fits it into the length of a novel, exploring more themes than I care to list. This book is not for everyone — it is a stream of consciousness, often getting lost and finding itself again all in one page. For the right reader, this book will provoke, inspire, and puzzle. For the wrong reader, it will likely feel disjointed and boring.
This is the most unique take on a plot I have ever read and I genuinely feel more knowledgeable for having read it. I never thought I would be interested in a book that is exploring themes of economics, but alas, here we are.
This is the most unique take on a plot I have ever read and I genuinely feel more knowledgeable for having read it. I never thought I would be interested in a book that is exploring themes of economics, but alas, here we are.
March 3, 2023
4.5
It’s weird to say that a book about a woman ruminating on all her mistakes and failures in the middle of the night is lighthearted, but here we are. I’ve been thinking about this book since I finished it a few nights ago.
This isn’t going to be a book for everyone, you’re literally in Abigail’s head throughout the book as she attempts to prepare for a lecture she’s giving the next day (she is so not ready!) while her husband and daughter are sleeping in the hotel room. Eventually other thoughts start coming into her head, something random that happened in elementary school or that guy that told her off in college. But thankfully this book doesn’t meander like so many stream of consciousness books do. And it isn’t written so densely that you can’t get through (the topic of the lecture eventually doesn’t even matter). The structure of trying to use the loci method with her house to memorize the lecture grounds the book and creates a narrative story line we can follow. There’s something so funny (and sad) about someone giving a lecture on optimism while their life is falling apart -Abigail, the breadwinner of the family, just lost tenure and keeps wondering how she ended up where she is in life. Am I selling this book at all?
I think Abigail is going to be one of those characters you either love or hate. I really related to her anxieties and the idea of ‘performing’. Not just performing when giving a speech on stage, but the very act of getting out of bed and ‘performing’ as yourself to people outside your home. I thought Riker created a very real and complex character. She’s just so awkward! It doesn’t help that she’s lost as to who she is and is almost looking for a model on how to be. There are so many names dropped in this book (writers, composers, economists), I eventually stopped googling and just went with it. But I can see in the people she knows or in the people she’s read about, she’s looking for a model in life. In the end, for me, the book was about ideas and creativity. Even in the darkest of times that’s what can help us find some safety or solid ground.
I’m also for any book that can throw in a few nods and allusions to Lewis Carroll well.
It’s weird to say that a book about a woman ruminating on all her mistakes and failures in the middle of the night is lighthearted, but here we are. I’ve been thinking about this book since I finished it a few nights ago.
This isn’t going to be a book for everyone, you’re literally in Abigail’s head throughout the book as she attempts to prepare for a lecture she’s giving the next day (she is so not ready!) while her husband and daughter are sleeping in the hotel room. Eventually other thoughts start coming into her head, something random that happened in elementary school or that guy that told her off in college. But thankfully this book doesn’t meander like so many stream of consciousness books do. And it isn’t written so densely that you can’t get through (the topic of the lecture eventually doesn’t even matter). The structure of trying to use the loci method with her house to memorize the lecture grounds the book and creates a narrative story line we can follow. There’s something so funny (and sad) about someone giving a lecture on optimism while their life is falling apart -Abigail, the breadwinner of the family, just lost tenure and keeps wondering how she ended up where she is in life. Am I selling this book at all?
I think Abigail is going to be one of those characters you either love or hate. I really related to her anxieties and the idea of ‘performing’. Not just performing when giving a speech on stage, but the very act of getting out of bed and ‘performing’ as yourself to people outside your home. I thought Riker created a very real and complex character. She’s just so awkward! It doesn’t help that she’s lost as to who she is and is almost looking for a model on how to be. There are so many names dropped in this book (writers, composers, economists), I eventually stopped googling and just went with it. But I can see in the people she knows or in the people she’s read about, she’s looking for a model in life. In the end, for me, the book was about ideas and creativity. Even in the darkest of times that’s what can help us find some safety or solid ground.
I’m also for any book that can throw in a few nods and allusions to Lewis Carroll well.
February 8, 2025
I loved this! It starts as a campus novel but gradually turns into a clever and thought-provoking (yet very readable) ‘novel of ideas’.
The entire book takes place over the course of a single night during which Abby, an idealistic economist who has just been denied tenure, lies awake and uses the time to prepare the guest lecture on Keynes she is supposed to give the next day. She is terribly underprepared and uses the ‘loci method’ to memorise her speech: imagining the different rooms in her house and associating parts of the speech with each room. And Keynes himself is there to accompany her.
What follows is a fun mix of big questions and private experiences. Keynes proves to be a much more interesting character than I expected and the book makes smart points on the function of economics, not so much as a science to predict the future but rather as part of a set of political and rhetorical instruments to effect change and create a better society. It is not dry at all and it is weaved in with large sections where Abby looks back at her life, trying to explain where it all wrong and how come her career is in ruins. And these parts are equally well done and not less thought-provoking, touching on ideology, feminism.
It was great to read something by someone who has put in not just research but actual thinking. And on top the writing is excellent.
Reading this at a time of seemingly unlimited government spending felt especially timely.
Many thanks to Grove and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.
The entire book takes place over the course of a single night during which Abby, an idealistic economist who has just been denied tenure, lies awake and uses the time to prepare the guest lecture on Keynes she is supposed to give the next day. She is terribly underprepared and uses the ‘loci method’ to memorise her speech: imagining the different rooms in her house and associating parts of the speech with each room. And Keynes himself is there to accompany her.
What follows is a fun mix of big questions and private experiences. Keynes proves to be a much more interesting character than I expected and the book makes smart points on the function of economics, not so much as a science to predict the future but rather as part of a set of political and rhetorical instruments to effect change and create a better society. It is not dry at all and it is weaved in with large sections where Abby looks back at her life, trying to explain where it all wrong and how come her career is in ruins. And these parts are equally well done and not less thought-provoking, touching on ideology, feminism.
It was great to read something by someone who has put in not just research but actual thinking. And on top the writing is excellent.
Reading this at a time of seemingly unlimited government spending felt especially timely.
Many thanks to Grove and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.
June 17, 2024
fleabag if she was an economist
July 11, 2025
i know nothing about economics but I am Abby
July 24, 2022
Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Press for the ebook. 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.
January 12, 2024
Completely absorbing. The plot device here was so engaging and fresh—I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like it before. An intelligent, anxious, and over-tired woman makes her way through a sleepless night. This book manages to be stream of conscious and also quite structured, with fascinating pitstops through feminism, economics, history, academia. And more than all of that it’s a woman’s (relatable and resonant) existential crisis of purpose and worth. I thought this was incredibly ambitious and so well done! 5/5
February 16, 2023
this one really worked for me! i was worried that the discussions of economics and philosophy would go over my head but i genuinely enjoyed it. loved that the structure is the narrator fully having a conversation with john maynard keynes in her head, because i too work through things by talking to myself. this was relatable and funny and touched on fears that i think a lot of us are grappling with right now
December 30, 2023
I think this would be a great book club selection. I loved this book.
April 12, 2023
Neil Gaiman once said "Let’s look at all of the different meanings and implications of the word “dream” and what dreams are.--[I]t’s still true that every night, we close our eyes, fall asleep and go mad. We meet people who are dead and encounter people who never existed and wind up in places where we have never been and never will be."
While Gaiman has written extensively about dreams, in The Guest Lecture, Riker has chosen to give us an up close and personal look at how many people spend their sleep cycles, in disjointed, anxious and fretful self-reflection. This entire fascinating book takes place in the insomniac mind of a woman in the early morning hours in a hotel room the night before she is to make a public speaking appearance.
The nominative topic of the speech is an analysis of Keynes' essay on "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren". The main thrust is less about economics, though, and more about the processes and thinking that lead to creativity. Riker offers a pretty scathing indictment that the conventions of academia and tenure guidelines work against creativity and curiosity. He also spends quite a bit of time on the idea that our desire to please, to not seem weird, also works against the creative process. Do we do what is expected of us, or what feels right? Which path actually leads to creativity?
"You were born into a homogenous wasteland, a society that champions sameness but treats people differently, a culture orchestrated to sell you things."
The focus of the lecture is to be on optimism, and the possibility of progress. But this rational exposition is in stark contrast to the crazy discourse that follows. I really liked how Riker told this story from the viewpoint of perhaps the most unreliable narrator imaginable, the semi-conscious mind of someone temporarily locked in the cyclical and random? thought processes arising from anxious insomnia and crippling self-doubt. Irrational emotions abound. It gave him the freedom to jump from topic to topic, and explore a wide variety of subjects related to how we view the world:
"—awake here fills my mind with nonsense, leaving space for nothing new. Thoughts fester. Thought festers. Thinks fall apart."
"Events that happened years ago, that are utterly lost to the past and have no consequences for the present, should not hit you in the middle of the night with an onrush of shame and self-loathing."
"Only you are blaming you. Only you are questioning your legitimacy, placing yourself in this witness box ostensibly to tell your side of things, to grant yourself justice, if only in your mind. The trouble being that it’s here, in your imagination, the place where you ought to feel most safe and free, that you are in fact most weighed down by doubt and fear." - Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy.
"Energy at the wrong moment is inefficiency, said Buckminster Fuller....She had energy to spare in the middle of the night, in the useless hours of the morning. Her insomnia energy could have fueled a small nation sustainably. She cared about the right things—she did!—but she did not pursue them as fully or as openly as she might have.”
He is ultimately drawing a parallel between this random walk of our thoughts, and the somewhat random flow of our lives. When we make highly uninformed decisions about our major in college, or which job offer to take, we set our lives on a path with zillions of unanticipated consequences.
I liked this metaphor for someone who feels besieged by their work situation:
"I was Maggie’s Obamacare. Disgruntled incumbents started dismantling me the minute she was out the door."
Also this view that reality is a matter of perspective, different for each individual.
"Maybe my memory of her is accurate, but it’s a memory of how I experienced her, rather than of who she was. It’s who she was for me."
While Gaiman has written extensively about dreams, in The Guest Lecture, Riker has chosen to give us an up close and personal look at how many people spend their sleep cycles, in disjointed, anxious and fretful self-reflection. This entire fascinating book takes place in the insomniac mind of a woman in the early morning hours in a hotel room the night before she is to make a public speaking appearance.
The nominative topic of the speech is an analysis of Keynes' essay on "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren". The main thrust is less about economics, though, and more about the processes and thinking that lead to creativity. Riker offers a pretty scathing indictment that the conventions of academia and tenure guidelines work against creativity and curiosity. He also spends quite a bit of time on the idea that our desire to please, to not seem weird, also works against the creative process. Do we do what is expected of us, or what feels right? Which path actually leads to creativity?
"You were born into a homogenous wasteland, a society that champions sameness but treats people differently, a culture orchestrated to sell you things."
The focus of the lecture is to be on optimism, and the possibility of progress. But this rational exposition is in stark contrast to the crazy discourse that follows. I really liked how Riker told this story from the viewpoint of perhaps the most unreliable narrator imaginable, the semi-conscious mind of someone temporarily locked in the cyclical and random? thought processes arising from anxious insomnia and crippling self-doubt. Irrational emotions abound. It gave him the freedom to jump from topic to topic, and explore a wide variety of subjects related to how we view the world:
"—awake here fills my mind with nonsense, leaving space for nothing new. Thoughts fester. Thought festers. Thinks fall apart."
"Events that happened years ago, that are utterly lost to the past and have no consequences for the present, should not hit you in the middle of the night with an onrush of shame and self-loathing."
"Only you are blaming you. Only you are questioning your legitimacy, placing yourself in this witness box ostensibly to tell your side of things, to grant yourself justice, if only in your mind. The trouble being that it’s here, in your imagination, the place where you ought to feel most safe and free, that you are in fact most weighed down by doubt and fear." - Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy.
"Energy at the wrong moment is inefficiency, said Buckminster Fuller....She had energy to spare in the middle of the night, in the useless hours of the morning. Her insomnia energy could have fueled a small nation sustainably. She cared about the right things—she did!—but she did not pursue them as fully or as openly as she might have.”
He is ultimately drawing a parallel between this random walk of our thoughts, and the somewhat random flow of our lives. When we make highly uninformed decisions about our major in college, or which job offer to take, we set our lives on a path with zillions of unanticipated consequences.
I liked this metaphor for someone who feels besieged by their work situation:
"I was Maggie’s Obamacare. Disgruntled incumbents started dismantling me the minute she was out the door."
Also this view that reality is a matter of perspective, different for each individual.
"Maybe my memory of her is accurate, but it’s a memory of how I experienced her, rather than of who she was. It’s who she was for me."
February 26, 2023
This is a fine novel. Ostensibly it's about Abigail, an assistant professor of economics who doesn't get tenure and stays up most of the night with insomnia thinking about a speech she has to give. She attempts to memorize her talk with the ancient "loci method" whereby you associated each element of your speech with a location on a well-known path meaningful to you. In her case, she uses the rooms of her house. The brilliant twist here is that instead of actually associating the points of her talk with the room, each room (her bedroom, her child's room, etc.) triggers all kinds of memories and self-dialogue going back to her youth.
What she is facing is something momentous -- the loss of one's career. In her case, the speech is going to be about the economist John Maynard Keynes and what she calls his rhetorical utopianism. What you see in the book is how she comes to realize that she, like Keynes himself, can be a "pragmatic optimistic." That's enough to say without getting into spoilers though in fact there's not much action here: It's all interior monologue.
One thing I can attest to is that all of the emotions and working through that she experiences with a momentous change in profession resonates pretty perfectly with my own experience.
What she is facing is something momentous -- the loss of one's career. In her case, the speech is going to be about the economist John Maynard Keynes and what she calls his rhetorical utopianism. What you see in the book is how she comes to realize that she, like Keynes himself, can be a "pragmatic optimistic." That's enough to say without getting into spoilers though in fact there's not much action here: It's all interior monologue.
One thing I can attest to is that all of the emotions and working through that she experiences with a momentous change in profession resonates pretty perfectly with my own experience.
June 20, 2024
This book is one of a kind and should be required reading for anyone in undergrad who wants to study philosophy, political science, rhetoric, or any kind of theory related academia.
“History is made out of realities but comes to us through stories, all the narratives we tell ourselves about who we are and what we care about, all the narratives people have told themselves, about themselves for centuries —these are ideology, the plots we live inside of. Ideology isn’t a bad thing—we have to live inside of something—but failure to recognize ideology for what it is, to bear in mind that society and culture are thing we made up and can remake and improve, keeps us from changing those aspects of our lives that could be better.”
Although, Keynesian theory is actively opposed to Marx the author uses the backstory of fictional Abby and real world history, rhetorical analysis, and other educational elements to remind us all to question why. And pushes you to realize that not all theorists wrote to give answers but to force society to drop its blinders and reimagine our world.
—— also just realized (next day) another point being made was that we fixate on preserving memories, and to what point they’re not to be trusted, when really it’s how we live (ideally unburdened by stagnant views of reality) that makes a life “worth??” living—— idk it sounded better in my head. I don’t critique theory anymore.
“History is made out of realities but comes to us through stories, all the narratives we tell ourselves about who we are and what we care about, all the narratives people have told themselves, about themselves for centuries —these are ideology, the plots we live inside of. Ideology isn’t a bad thing—we have to live inside of something—but failure to recognize ideology for what it is, to bear in mind that society and culture are thing we made up and can remake and improve, keeps us from changing those aspects of our lives that could be better.”
Although, Keynesian theory is actively opposed to Marx the author uses the backstory of fictional Abby and real world history, rhetorical analysis, and other educational elements to remind us all to question why. And pushes you to realize that not all theorists wrote to give answers but to force society to drop its blinders and reimagine our world.
—— also just realized (next day) another point being made was that we fixate on preserving memories, and to what point they’re not to be trusted, when really it’s how we live (ideally unburdened by stagnant views of reality) that makes a life “worth??” living—— idk it sounded better in my head. I don’t critique theory anymore.
March 12, 2023
A refreshing take on realism in general and the campus novel in particular. A visiting professor, recently denied tenure in her economics department, is preparing a speech on Keynes and optimism, despite her pessimistic frame of mind. She is trying to organize her thoughts and notions by visualizing rooms in her house and with the help of a helpful imaginary version of Keynes himself, but her thoughts begin to wander. After the horror kick I've been on, it was instructive to be reminded that scarier than any cultist or slasher is the sudden notion in the witching hour that I have wasted my life and there is no possible way to undo things. To see that kind of internal shiver get portrayed and dramatized was impressive and something of a relief. A drama without a plot, a full world with only one voice, a realist novel that slips into dream logic towards the end as easily and softly as you will tonight.
April 30, 2023
I liked everything about this. If you’ve ever struggled with self-doubt, or whether you’ve lived a life worth living, or if the opportunities you didn’t take would have made all the difference, this book could be perversely affirming- or at least I found it so. In addition, it’s ingeniously well written and smart, with a protagonist who is equally annoying as she is sympathetic as she prepares herself mentally through self examination and dialogue with an imaginary interlocutor for a potentially life-changing event. Ideally I would have liked to have read this in one sitting in as close to real time as the steam of consciousness narrative itself, but alas.
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