The Guest Lecture

"I stayed up too late reading this novel of ideas that enacts a sleepless night. Martin Riker takes us into the mind of Abby, an economist who has just been denied tenure, as she prepares to give a lecture on John Maynard Keynes. Abby mentally walks through her house, attempting to memorize her speech on Keynes’ pragmatic optimism by associating the speech’s different sections with familiar rooms. But she keeps getting sidetracked, pulled into self-recriminations and anxieties – and into imagined dialogues with the likes of Keynes himself. In Riker’s nimble hands, this insomniac’s dark night of the soul abounds with humor and feeling."