Maximum Speed

by Kevin Clouther

Like Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Kevin Clouther’s Maximum Speed moves across time and point of view to dramatize youth’s aftershocks. The unifying presence in three characters’ lives is Billy, an apprentice drug dealer in South Florida. His improbable appearance twenty years after his death reconnects Nick, Andrea, and Jim with each other and with the shared secret of their past.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

Kindle Edition

Published January 22, 2025

About the author

Kevin Clouther (he/him) is the author of the story collections Maximum Speed (Cornerstone) and We Were Flying to Chicago (Catapult). His stories have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Joyland, New Orleans Review, Ruminate, and StoryQuarterly, among other journals. He holds degrees from the University of Virginia and Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the recipient of the Richard Yates Fiction Award and Gell Residency Award. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha Writer’s Workshop, where he directs the MFA in Writing. He lives with his wife and two children in Omaha.

Reviews

[Ericka Clou · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you read this, could you please help out by rating or reviewing it?

I read an advanced review copy. I'm a *bit* biased, but this is a truly glorious addition to my all-time favorites. It's an interconnected short story collection with four very compelling central characters. It reminds me of so many books I love. Like Conversations with Friends (my favorite Sally Rooney) I care about what the characters are up to. Like A Visit from the Goon Squad, I'm eager to return to each character's perspective as the story hops around in time to tell the story. The writing has the clean and necessary feel of The Old Man and the Sea. At the same time, the collection has a Generation X sensibility that I love.

The first story in the collection is very brief and one of my favorite short stories of all time. Every sentence in it is amazing, but here's a taste: "Both students and teachers gave him the benefit of the doubt and liked him better for this, recognizing their generosity. Boys respected but did not envy him, thinking of the things they would see at thirty and forty and fifty, but almost every girl loved him for a while."

I flew through the book. I can't wait for everyone else to enjoy it! Out now! https://amzn.to/3E3z0sT

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great collection of short stories! As someone who does not usually prefer this genre, Clouther converted me and showed me why short stories are worth reading. I cannot recommend it enough!

[David Snee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good stories, well told. Great sentences all throughout. Characters recur between stories; events continue. So, the breaks between stories function a bit like chapter breaks, only with more allowance for skipping around. 4 distinct POVs, fully fleshed and interwoven. The title refers to a question posed by a boy to his father: maximum strength or maximum speed. The choice means everything.

My favorite stories are the last two: ASSASSIN and PATTY. They ride the momentum of the ones leading up and leave you with questions somehow both nostalgic and future-facing.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought it was an interesting story about youth and drugs.

[Kevin Clouther]

Now available as an eBook via Amazon and B&N

[Jerome Lusa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is also my Amazon review: What started as a collection of short stories turns out to be a richly interconnected exploration of youth’s fleeting innocence, of the angst of middle age retrospection, and the ways life crashes on different peoples' shores. The writing is a breezy whirlwind of catchy images that fall into place at the speed of thought. I was wanting more until the end; now I just want to sit on a beach and let the feeling of the stories, the story, wash over me.

[Anne Osmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of interconnected stories will stay with me for a long time. The character Billy serves as an anchor, as we move back and forth through time, considering memory and relationships through the lenses of youth and adulthood. The sentences are wonderful. The stories are intriguing. I could not put this book down.