What happens when a brutal crime threatens a mother's love for her son? An old Florida family and those in their orbit get caught in a torrent of passion, a deadly legal system, and the mythology of the Everglades, which runs as deep as this story does. Propulsive, engaging, evocative, beautiful writing. Estella Verus - part Seminole, part black, part white - a federal prosecutor in South Florida, is the victim of a home invasion during which she is savagely beaten. The perpetrator leaves a note saying that Estella's son, Andrew, sent him to do it. When Andrew is charged with complicity in the crime, Estella is desperate to talk to him in her efforts to discover the truth, but while she's still in the hospital recovering from her injuries, Andrew's lawyer has her served with a restraining order, preventing her from talking to him to protect his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Thus begins The Speed of Life, literary fiction told through multiple plots by multiple narrators, mirroring the structure of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad. A search for the truth of whether or not Andrew sent the intruder to harm his mother is the central plot, but it overlaps other storylines, each exploring the novel's theme: How can we know what is real and what is just? These should be questions at the heart of every trial but The Speed of Life takes these questions further, exploring them in contexts beyond the law, including romantic love, familial love, neighborly love, shamanism and even astrophysics as the story involves real science, as does The Martian, by Andy Weir and math, philosophy, and the history of science as in the novels of Neal Stephenson. T. C. Boyle, Kip Thorne, Tom Holland, Madison Smartt Bell, and Aram Saroyan have read the novel and written blurbs. T. C. Boyle says of The Speed of Life that it is a "thoroughly enjoyable triumph of a first novel." Professor Thorne credits The Speed of Life with "solid astrophysics." Kirkus Reviews has reviewed the manuscript calling it "impressive" and that "Descriptions . . . are primarily images that Jordan sears onto the pages."

本作は凄惨な事件を起点に、法廷劇の枠を超え、宇宙物理学や神話までもが交錯する壮大な知の迷宮です。ジョーダンは複数の語り手が織り成す重層的な構造を駆使し、真実と正義の不確かさを残酷なまでに浮き彫りにします。エヴァグレーズの湿地に潜む神秘と、最先端の科学的知見が共存するその筆致は、読者の知的好奇心を激しく揺さぶります。 母子の愛を裂く沈黙の壁を軸に、物語は愛の形を問い直します。一見無関係なエピソード群が、宇宙の速度で収束していく構成の妙は、まさに文学的なカタルシスです。法システムと人間の情動、そして星々の運行。それらすべてを閉じ込めた本作は、現実の定義を揺るがす圧倒的な熱量に満ちた、類まれなる野心作といえるでしょう。