SPEECH TEAM
by Tim Murphy
Bad news about a classmate occasions an unexpected road trip for four high school friends.
When a text from his old pal Natalie Farb-Miola alerts him to the suicide of their classmate Pete Stroman, Tip Murray is deluged with memories of the boy who was his first crush: “No Hollywood star, no Celtics or Patriots god, no muscled, Speedo-wearing deity of Provincetown or Fire Island, will ever compare, because your first flush of desire, amid the tender years where there is no clear line between the treble notes of infatuation and the bass notes of brute lust, will always be the sharpest and the sweetest.” That kind of clarity is missing in his life now. He is five years sober, he owns a home with his boyfriend in Providence, Rhode Island, and he’s “fairly sure” he’s happy, but this news unsettles him in a way he can’t pinpoint. He reconnects with Nat, who was the hippie chick of their high school, and also tracks down Jennifer Douglas, one of the few Black students, a buttoned-up overachiever, and Anthony Malouf, the other gay kid, now a successful fashion designer. All four were on the Speech Team, as was Pete, all fearsome competitors in tournaments around the state, but there are unresolved problems in Tip’s friendship with each of them. In Pete’s suicide note, he recalled a cruel comment made to him by their coach, Gary Gold; it turns out they all nurse wounds dealt by their supposed mentor, who is now retired in Sarasota, Florida. Bankrolled by Anthony, the foursome decides to pay him a visit, but little goes as planned, and the half-mended cracks in Tip's equilibrium spread disastrously. Murphy, a longtime journalist and author of the novels Christodora (2016) and Correspondents (2019), again brings his finely tuned ability to portray subtle group dynamics to bear in this semiautobiographical update of the Big Chill trope. If the persona and behavior of the coach character never quite add up, Murphy seems to be intentionally shrugging in that direction. Maybe cruelty is always somewhat inexplicable.
Misfit kids of the 1970s and ’80s—here's the class reunion you were waiting for.