Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“I personally like to pretend the phrase ‘deep cut’ has a totally different meaning, one that has nothing to do with anyone else’s opinion. How deep does it cut? How close to the bone? How long do you feel it?”
“Why do we listen to those voices, calling from just outside our door, that tell us to reject contentment in search of something more?”
“’Am I allowed to be a person right now?’”
Deep Cuts is about music and life. We follow Percy Marks from college to adulthood as she navigates relationships and her place in this world. She is roughly the same age as me so I relate to a lot of the events. The time periods that were referenced really hit home. Percy went to college in the early 2000s and so cultural milestones, like September 11th, evoked vivid imagery and feelings in me. It spans many years and several cities. There is also Joe, who is a musician and throughout the book, he is the yang to Percy’s yin. They revolve around each other, occasionally colliding, and greatly influencing each other’s lives. Percy is all about music, writing, and critiquing. She helps others write music and writes articles about music, but does she have what it takes to write her own songs?
This is the type of book I have always wanted to write. Each chapter is a song title and seems to be intricately woven into what is going on. The music sets the scene and tone for what is happening on the pages. I didn’t pull up the song every single time one was mentioned but I did it a lot. There is even a playlist on Spotify with a list of songs from this book (which I am not listening to as I write this). I do love music and have always wondered how it could work within the confines of a book. I think that Holly Brickley did a great job of doing this and I am jealous. This book grabbed me from the first chapter. The repartee between the characters and the time period it took place in was energizing. I was excited to see what would happen in this story and how it would evolve & resolve. It felt like an indie film and it was all about character development. It was punchy and clever. It was a kind of love story with a will they/won’t they vibe. Love of each other or of music or what they other elevates them to do. I wrote down tons of artists and songs to go back and listen to. One thing about my listening habits is that I favor style over substance. I tend not to listen to the lyrics as much as I would like to. Now after reading this, I want to listen to the highlighted songs with a new ear. I want to focus on the lyrics and give the artists their due. Holly used the phrased “sprawl of knowledge more than a well of joy” which made me think and consider. I liked how she intimated that going deep into something is joyful. There was a lot of good turn of phrases and sentences that I related to. “It was the kind of beer that tasted like rubber bands” and I could immediately conjure that taste in my mouth. “Instead of sleeping that night I revised my end of the conversation in my head over and over” which is something I could understand immensely. I had a bad habit of doing that over and over again…or the reverse where I play out potential future conversations that have yet to happen. I love it when books reference the title in a normal way as when Holly does it on page 27. I liked the comment on men. “’Boys are less afraid of being wrong’…this was why men got to run the world, even as it became slowly obvious that they were terrible at it.” I had to laugh out loud at this. I liked how the author took lyrics from songs and expanded on them including possible meanings. “The bottomless pit of misfortune hovering just on wrong step away from all of us? It’s a miracle just to be here, the song seemed to say, on this side of the blue. Don’t torture yourself trying to understand why. Know what you know. Do what you have to do.” There were songs “written” by Joe & Percy that were referenced in the book too. It was a cool tie back in. The words in this book that I ran across that I enjoyed, looked up, and said out loud were ensorcelled, melisma, and prismatically (the way this was used was perfection). I really love ensorcelled. It is just a fun word. This is exactly the type of book that I would read to get great song suggestions especially ones that I would not normally be exposed to. It is a thoughtfully written book.
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