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With a voice as clear sincere and wry as any I ve read in current American fiction (Joshua Cohen) Martin Riker s poignant and startlingly original novel asks how to foster a brave mind in anxious times following a newly jobless academic rehearsing a speech on John Maynard Keynes for a surprising audience In a hotel room in the middle of the night Abby a young feminist economist lies awake next to her sleeping husband and daughter. Anxious that she is grossly underprepared for a talk she is presenting tomorrow on optimism and John Maynard Keynes she has resolved to practice by using an ancient rhetorical method of assigning parts of her speech to different rooms in her house and has brought along a comforting albeit imaginary companion to keep her on track--Keynes himself. Yet as she wanders with increasing alarm through the rooms of her own consciousness Abby finds herself straying from her prepared remarks on economic history utopia and Keynes s pragmatic optimism. A lapsed optimist h