Review: Two possible lovers glide along on songs they love in ‘Deep Cuts’

It’s perhaps inevitable that Holly Brickley’s “Deep Cuts” will be likened to other noteworthy (feeble pun intended) books that incorporate music — most recently “Daisy Jones and the Six,” possibly “High Fidelity,” etc. But being compared favorably to previous bestsellers isn’t the only thing that makes “Deep Cuts” stand out, although it certainly doesn’t hurt.

For one thing, it comes with a soundtrack. To get the most out of reading Brickley’s debut, you’ll want to access the accompanying music at deepcutsbook.com/#playlist. Each chapter is given the title of a song — some real, some imagined — that influences the content. Unless your knowledge of tunes is encyclopedic, you’ll want to listen along as the chapters unfold.

“Sara Smile” kicks things off when college students Joe Morrow and Percy Marks meet the way only music nerds can — over a song, in this case in a bar. It’s 2000, and the bartender has just handed Percy a beer when the Hall and Oates song starts up on the jukebox. Joe is overwhelmed by its perfection and tells Percy as much. She replies, “I would call this a perfect track, a perfect recording. Not a perfect song.” Fighting words!

It becomes clear as they discuss the merits of “Sara Smile” that there might be a burgeoning attraction. But alas, it is not to be, Percy thinks, because Joe already has a girlfriend (the high-profile couple are referred to as “Joey and Zoe who both like Bowie” around campus). When Joe, who writes his own songs, asks Percy to tell him what she thinks, becoming his chief critic, they fall into a different kind of relationship. Eventually she provides lyrics, too, sharpening his songs in ways he comes to need.

What could have been a straight-up romance turns into something far more interesting, as Joe and Percy battle each other, fighting attraction occasionally, but becoming friends, too, as they focus on music. Joe’s trajectory is clear. He wants to be a singer-songwriter, but Percy has trouble figuring out where she belongs, dabbling in writing about music, grad school and the corporate world. Maybe, just maybe, she wants to BE Joe, not just a friend or girlfriend.

What it means to collaborate drives “Deep Cuts.” The novel follows Joe and Percy over about eight years, leapfrogging in increments of two or three years. They are often at different places in their lives, emotionally and career-wise, but they can never deny what they bring to the table creatively. For better or worse, they click in that department, but can’t seem to untangle who they are individually within their collaboration.

Brickley often includes Percy’s writing about music to elucidate her character’s state, a somewhat clunky device but an illuminating one.

For instance, in a graduate seminar essay about Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel #2,” Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You” and “Our House” by Graham Nash, Percy digs into what it means to be the subject of a song (Janis Joplin in “Chelsea Hotel #2”), to be the songwriter (Mitchell writing about Cohen in “A Case of You”) and to be in a relationship with the person who writes a song about you (Nash on Mitchell in “Our House”), all facets of her own turmoil. It’s a lot, but the last sentence succinctly summarizes it all for Percy: “We are all just writing about ourselves.”

Words and music, music and words, it’s all personal for her, but will she ever realize harmony? Brickley knows and skillfully guides Percy’s ambitions as she negotiates having something to say with how to best say it.

Deep Cuts

By: Holly Brickley.

Publisher: Crown, 275 pages, $28.