Speedboat

Speedboat lands if you approach it like a flash fiction collection. Each flash arrives as an anecdote or observation from the narrator. Some characters pop up several times; most do not. The book survives on the quality of Renata Adler's sentences and how well she strings them together. The sentences are often good, yet the observations aren't memorable.

Adler delivers one of the best passages in the first paragraph of the book:

The city, of course, can wreck it. So much insomnia. So many rhythms collide. The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind. Some people are indifferent to dislike, even relish it. Hardly anyone I know.

Great writing. The paragraph invites you to read on. You discover more like it across the book. And you enjoy them when you do. But you struggle to remember them. They feel like stories from the smartest guest at a dinner party, forgotten in the hangover the morning after.

A few more examples.

It is strange to think that most of the children under six whom one knows and loves, gives presents to, whatever, are not going to remember most emotional events of those first years, on the couch, or in jail, or in a bank, wherever they may find themselves when they are twenty-five.

The idea feels familiar. Children forget the moments we fuss over. A friend might make the same observation. Or maybe you arrive there on your own. Adler captures it well. The "whatever" carries a lot of weight, a catchall for the efforts and sacrifices people make for children who will not remember it. You admire the craft, but without a story to hold it, the passage feels chalked onto a sidewalk before a rainstorm.

This one made me laugh:

At six one morning, Will went out in jeans and a frayed sweater to buy a quart of milk. A tourist bus went by. The megaphone was directed at him. "There's one," it said. That was in the 1960s. Ever since, he's wondered. There's one what?

This one I love:

In the South, in simpler days, I remember a middle-aged gentle black worker speaking to his son who had insomnia. "When you can't sleep," he said, "just tell yourself the story of your life." Now sometimes when I can't sleep, I wonder. A twenty-four-hour curfew every day, for everybody. Suppose we blow up the whole thing. Everything. Everybody. Me. Buildings. No room. Blast. All dead. No survivors. And then I would say, and then I would say, Let's just have it a little quiet around here.

And finally, a story set in a nursery school. Six students are called Kevin. At the end of the day the students board the bus, and the teachers notice one of the Kevins is missing. We get this:

It turned out that every single child on the school bus had known that one of their Kevins was missing. They had not mentioned it to the driver, or their teacher, or each other. They took it that Kevin had been left, forever, for some reason, which would become clear to them, with patience, in the course of time.