Perfect Tunes
-
- 7,49 €
-
- 7,49 €
Publisher Description
'Shows the ways in which we are all, always, having to reimagine the story of our lives' Refinery29
'Really smart and exceptionally good' Curtis Sittenfeld
'A moving investigation of love, loss and parenthood' Esquire
'Mind-blowing . . . brilliant and fearless' Elif Batuman
The perfect song. The biggest dream. The love of her life.
It’s the early days of the new millennium, and Laura has arrived in New York City’s East Village in the hopes of recording her first album. A songwriter with a one-of-a-kind talent, she’s just beginning to book gigs with her beautiful best friend when she falls hard for a troubled but magnetic musician whose star is on the rise. Their time together is stormy and short-lived – but will reverberate for the rest of Laura’s life.
Fifteen years later, Laura’s teenage daughter is asking questions about her father, questions Laura does not want to answer. Laura has built a stable life in Brooklyn that bears little resemblance to the one she envisioned all those years ago, and she’s taken pains to close the door on what was and what might have been. When her best friend – now a famous musician – comes to town, opportunity knocks for Laura for a second time. Has growing older changed who she is and what she most wants? After all the sacrifices and compromises she’s made along the way, how much is she still that girl from Ohio, with big talent and big dreams?
Funny, wise and tender-hearted, Perfect Tunes explores the fault lines in our most important relationships, and asks whether dreams deferred can ever be reclaimed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gould's sharply observant novel (after Friendship) follows an aspiring singer-songwriter on the fringes of New York City's rock music scene. In the early 2000s, 22-year-old Laura moves from Columbus, Ohio, into her high school friend Callie's East Village apartment, too late to catch the neighborhood's "mythic version of itself that existed in her mind." While working as a greeter at a slick lounge, she dreams of a music career and begins dating and doing drugs with Dylan, singer and guitarist for an up-and-coming band. After Dylan dies in a drug-related accidental drowning, Callie and Laura are invited to replace Dylan in the band, but Laura, pregnant with Dylan's child, opts not to. Callie joins, and later, single mom Laura moves to Brooklyn, teaches music classes, and settles down with a divorced father. By 2016, Laura's baby has grown into a rebellious teenager and Laura continues to waver between making ends meet and pursuing her dream. While Gould falters when depicting emotional connections, she offers vivid glimpses of N.Y.C.'s recent past and impresses with striking language: a hangover makes Laura's head "feel like a black banana," and her baby is a "bomb" that requires "steady-handed defusing." Gould's portrait of a would-be artist as a young woman offers fresh, poignant insights into the challenges faced by the city's transplanted dreamers.
