Customer Reviews

The Speed of Dark

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It's the 1960s and a young teenager named Luke moves to a new community with his family. While riding in the fog of a DDT truck, he meets a girl named Celeste who seems to rise up out of the fog to lure him in and turn his world upside down.
There is something strange about Celeste. This fantastic girl seems to be able to make strange things happen, and not just to Luke. Between coping with his new home, friends, his odd new girlfriend and his mentally challenged sister, Luke is having quite a summer.
Speed of Dark is well written, fast-paced, and a fun, escapist fantasy. I highly recommend it.

"The Speed of Dark" is an entertaining novel that is one part a coming of age story and one part spiritual thriller. It is a first person narrative told by Luke D'Angelo about his interaction and affection for a mysterious young girl named Celeste.

Luke is new to the small town of Faith Junction, and he finds himself in the position of an outsider, struggling to make friends. He is immediately drawn to Celeste, a beautiful young girl, who, despite being a longtime resident of the town, also seems to be an outsider. As Luke queries with the other residents of the town, he finds there is a rather large mystery surrounding Celeste. Her origins are uncertain, and she is rumored to have supernatural powers of an unprecedented scale.

Undeterred by the warnings, Luke continues his pursuit of Celeste, and soon finds himself wrapped up in a sequence of events that threaten to destroy everyone he knows and cares about.

"The Speed of Dark" is a well-crafted tale that quickly draws in the reader and keeps them entertained until the final word. The supernatural element is the real hook to the story, but I found myself enjoying the natural interactions of the young characters even more. Their is a realism to their behavior that provides an interesting glimpse into the adolescent life of 1964. At one point, Luke chases after a truck spraying DDT just to play in the chemical cloud it is producing. In the author's note, Barbara Quinn writes that this was a common practice in the days of her youth, a fact which I found to be as interesting as it is disturbing.

At times, "The Speed of Dark" might be a little too honest in its portrayal of things such as adolescent sexuality for the likes of some parents. However, these components of the work are included for authenticity and realism, and are never gratuitous or offensive. Any parent who doesn't think that such activities are going on today, is really just being naive.

"The Speed of Dark" is an entertaining novel that I think will especially appeal to adolescents and young readers. It has a supernatural element that keeps you guessing until the end, but its real draw is the simple interaction, and realism of its characters.

From the back cover of the book:

I'm always on the lookout for a good new author and Barbara Quinn fits that description to a "T." I loved The Speed of Dark, from the wonderfully realized setting to the characters and their complicated,but timeless, relationships with each other. Quinn has also done a terrific job in bringing to life what it was like growing up in the early part of the sixties. I was a teenager at that time and a lot of what she writes about is eerily familiar-either from my own life, or the
people I knew at the time.-Charles de Lint, author of Someplace to be Flying, Forests of the Heart,Seven Wild Sisters, The Onion Girl


By turns lyrical and grittily realistic, The Speed of Dark brings its own vision to the Stephen King territory of small town life in the sixties. In a novel rich with period detail, Barbara Quinn effectively captures the sense of the numinous that pervades everyday life.-Eileen Kernaghan, author of The Snow Queen, Songs from the Drowned Lands, and
The Sarsen Witch

Barbara Quinn's novel The Speed of Dark is a fascinating and
imaginative story, blending the real with the fantastic, giving us characters we can know and root for. Her writing is wise and magical,filled with wit, passion and honesty. Barbara reminds me of my late friend Laurie Colwin and will be a successful novelist when published. This is an engrossing and rewarding novel. Readers will have fun and be profoundly moved. -Noel Hynd, author of Ghosts and Cemetery of Angels


There are some people you never forget. In the summer of 1964, Luke D'Angelo falls for one of them-an unforgettable girl named Celeste. Like Luke, Celeste is struggling to find her identity. But unlike Luke, Celeste has special powers, powers that threaten to upset the balance of light and dark in the world. Luke and his mentally challenged sister become fast friends with this curious girl. Set in upstate New York, in a town that is home to a shrimp cocktail plant that belches a foul-smelling tomato-and-fish fog, this coming-of-age tale about a girl
with a dream and the teens who want to help her fulfill it is a balance between the comic and the profound. The story resonates with the message that inside each of us is a light that burns so bright that no dark can extinguish it.