School of Velocity

**Shortlist, Vine Awards 2017

Shortlist, Kobo Emerging Writer Prize 2017

Finalist, Frank Hegyi Award for Emerging Authors 2017

Guardian/Observer Best Books 2016

Amazon Rising Stars 2016, for Best Debuts

CBC Books Best Canadian Debuts 2016

"A hugely impressive first novel about music, friendship and obsession. Gripping and emotional." —David Nicholls, bestselling author of One Day

"Both tender and truthful in its evoking of the canyon that lies between the openness of youth and the dangerous restraint of middle age, this is a luminous, quiet storm of a novel that resounds long after its heartbreaking coda." —Diana Evans, The Guardian

"De Vries's final confrontation with Dirk is a tragic, Gatsby-like meditation on the impossibility of reliving the past, however much we cling to our memories." —Financial Times**

A wrenching and spare novel about an electric friendship 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 mind. As the disorder reaches its devastating peak the walls Jan has built around himself start to crumble, and he's unable to repress the trove of memories and 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 Dirk.

With a masterful balance of emotional resonance and restraint, Eric Beck Rubin tells the story of Jan's obsessive friendship with the charismatic, irreverent Dirk as the reader breathlessly awaits their reunion. This is a story about music, repression and regret; about adolescence, sex and friendship; and, ultimately, about the kind of love that lasts a lifetime.