Cover: Zuber & Cie, Eldorado (designed 1848), panel 7, printed 1904. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Avery Venn
Fast
A year. Four lives. One painted paradise that nobody lives in.
In London, an anaesthetist who has spent her life being leaned on finds a man who will hold her.
In Tokyo, a model slips out of every party by the service lift, to the one place nobody knows.
In Barnes, a lawyer who has never lost anything cannot understand why her children don't want more.
In Geneva, a world champion is content alone, whatever anyone says.
On a closed Tuesday, in a museum of wallpaper in Alsace, three of them are in the same room when an old man's heart stops.
Fast is a novel about speed and stillness, about being held and holding on, and about what it costs to be very good at something. It is dry, exact and quietly funny. It does not tie up every thread.