Friction, the second novel by Matt Marshall (The Starlight Line), unfolds over the course of the tumultuous year 2014. The planet continues to warm, pro- Russian militants seize large swaths of Eastern Ukraine, the Islamic State rises to terror in the Middle East, Syria splinters further toward collapse, Ebola breaks out in West Africa, unbridled white cops cut down unarmed blacks in U.S. cities, heroin kills indiscriminately throughout the Midwest (and beyond), a floundering man meets a desperate woman wheeling her bike off the velodrome in Cleveland. Written in a free-flowing style punctuated by shifts in font size, Friction follows the relationship between these two Clevelanders-the