Live Fast: A Novel

On the first page of Live Fast, the narrator’s husband is already dead. He died in a motorcycle accident. What follows is a retracing of everything that happened, pieced together with whatever information surrounding the moment of impact his widow can find. Though some pieces of what did happen remain unknown to the narrator, the biggest mystery she explores is what could have happened differently. If writing can be a form of therapy, it can also be a codified, tangible way to document an obsessive descent into madness. What a futile therapeutic exercise it is when you find yourself only able to write in the past conditional of “If only”.

The structure of the novel is genius and fitting for the subject matter. Rather than being paced “with the inevitable suspense of a countdown”, I would say it is strung along by an unchangeable regret that fills the reader with sadness rather than suspense. Therefore, the genius of the writing does not make for a fun read. That is natural, however. Live Fast is not a mystery or a thriller. It is a poetic elegy exploring grief and the human desire to find patterns of meaning in a chaotic world.