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Material Type | Library | Call Number | Suggested Age | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... Putnam Main Public Library | MUR | Adult | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"A tender-hearted novel and a dream to read. I loved this book." -- Matt Haig #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library
"so so so so good...[Speech Team] is a MUST...It has all the feels and brilliant writing to boot." -- Elin Hilderband (on Instagram) #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Five Star Weekend
A funny, gossipy and ultimately poignant novel about four Gen X teen friends turned 21st-century adults who awkwardly come back together to confront an influential teacher whose brutal remarks have haunted them all for years.
In his early forties, nonprofit writer Tip Murray is just getting past the wreckage of his youth and settling into semi-humdrum married New England domesticity. Things take an unusual turn when he receives shocking news from his high school best friend, hippie farmer Natalie, that one of their former teammates from speech team, Pete, has committed suicide. Surprisingly mentioned in Pete's final Facebook post? A devastating comment made to him by their speech team coach, Gary Gold.
Feeling nostalgic for their 80s adolescence, Tip and Nat decide to reconnect with two long lost friends from the team, haughty menswear designer Anthony and tightly wound college professor Jennifer. The reunited quartet quickly discover an unsettling thread: all were quietly wounded by Mr. Gold's deeply cutting remarks. The silver lining? Gold is still alive, and a quick Google search shows that he has retired to Florida. There's only one thing left to do: fly down to a posh resort to confront him. What happens next is far from what any of them could have imagined.
Fueled by cringe-y confrontations and 80s nostalgia, a literary mashup of The Breakfast Club and The Big Chill , Speech Team explores what it means to take account of the pain that can suffuse a life and what it means, years on, to move forward.
"Tim Murphy is a genius at sweeping, character-driven stories that suck you in until the very last page, and Speech Team is no exception." --Andy Cohen
Author Notes
Tim Murphy is the author of Correspondents and Christodora , which was long-listed for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian . He has also been a journalist for the past twenty-five years.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
Bad news about a classmate occasions an unexpected road trip for four high school friends. When a text from his old pal Natalie Farb-Miola alerts him to the suicide of their classmate Pete Stroman, Tip Murray is deluged with memories of the boy who was his first crush: "No Hollywood star, no Celtics or Patriots god, no muscled, Speedo-wearing deity of Provincetown or Fire Island, will ever compare, because your first flush of desire, amid the tender years where there is no clear line between the treble notes of infatuation and the bass notes of brute lust, will always be the sharpest and the sweetest." That kind of clarity is missing in his life now. He is five years sober, he owns a home with his boyfriend in Providence, Rhode Island, and he's "fairly sure" he's happy, but this news unsettles him in a way he can't pinpoint. He reconnects with Nat, who was the hippie chick of their high school, and also tracks down Jennifer Douglas, one of the few Black students, a buttoned-up overachiever, and Anthony Malouf, the other gay kid, now a successful fashion designer. All four were on the Speech Team, as was Pete, all fearsome competitors in tournaments around the state, but there are unresolved problems in Tip's friendship with each of them. In Pete's suicide note, he recalled a cruel comment made to him by their coach, Gary Gold; it turns out they all nurse wounds dealt by their supposed mentor, who is now retired in Sarasota, Florida. Bankrolled by Anthony, the foursome decides to pay him a visit, but little goes as planned, and the half-mended cracks in Tip's equilibrium spread disastrously. Murphy, a longtime journalist and author of the novels Christodora (2016) and Correspondents (2019), again brings his finely tuned ability to portray subtle group dynamics to bear in this semiautobiographical update of the Big Chill trope. If the persona and behavior of the coach character never quite add up, Murphy seems to be intentionally shrugging in that direction. Maybe cruelty is always somewhat inexplicable. Misfit kids of the 1970s and '80s--here's the class reunion you were waiting for. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
