School of Velocity

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A wrenching and deceptively spare debut novel about an electric friendship between two boys that slowly reveals itself as a deep and lifelong love. Jan de Vries is a virtuoso pianist who would be in the prime of his career but for the crippling auditory hallucinations that have plundered his performances and his mind. As the disorder reaches its devastating peak the walls Jan has built around him crumble, rendering him unable to repress the overwhelming flood of memories and the troves of unspoken words that linger between him and his childhood best friend, Dirk Noosen, with whom he lost touch long ago. He is faced with only one recourse: to head home and confront him. With a singular voice and a masterful balance of emotional resonance and restraint, Eric Beck Rubin tells the tender story of Jan's obsessive friendship with the charismatic, irreverent raconteur Dirk as the reader breathlessly awaits their reunion. This luminous novel is about music, repression and regret; about adolescence, sex and friendship, and, ultimately, about the kind of love that lasts a lifetime.