For one, Gould isn’t quite up to the task of transmogrifying music-a fundamentally non-verbal art form-into vivid sentences. Early chapters, when Laura is young and childless, fail to show what it is, specifically, that songwriting does for her. There’s a particularly moving scene when Marie, confused and disturbed by a recent turn of events in her flirtation with a classmate, comes home drunk, and after a tense confrontation with Laura, Marie off-handedly remarks, “We’ve never been close.” We instantly share Laura’s reaction of shock and bafflement, because Marie’s infanthood, when mother and daughter had “slept in the same bed, breathing in the same rhythm, Marie’s legs kicking in the stomach as she drifted from one dream to the next,” was so well-rendered in part two.īut the novel’s other main focus-Laura’s musical aspirations and how they conflict with her responsibilities and identity as a parent-never feels as alive as the mother-daughter relationship. Gould skillfully tracks Marie’s struggle with depression and Laura’s guilt about feeling unfulfilled by a life devoted to parenthood. For the first time in Perfect Tunes, the narrative moves outside Laura’s consciousness and into Marie’s, opening up wonderful new dramatic avenues. Part three, the novel’s most compelling section, deals with teenage Marie’s relationship with Laura-and with her stepfather and stepsister, whom Laura meets toward the end of part two. All the while, Callie’s music career flourishes. As her daughter, Marie, grows into a toddler, Laura puts her artistic aspirations on hold. They begin a tentative romance, and as Laura navigates the inadequacies of their relationship and pursues her own artistic goals, a pair of tragedies strikes and Gould ruptures the book’s narrative, jumping forward about a year into part two, which covers the early years of Laura’s single motherhood-material that, with its authentic portrait of the day-to-day challenges of childrearing, often recalls the last few stories in Harold Brodkey’s First Love and Other Sorrows. One night at a music venue, she meets Dylan, whose band, the Clips, is on stardom’s doorstep. Laura quickly takes a job as a hostess at an upscale bar, where she’s subject to the demeaning treatment of her male supervisor. Part one of Perfect Tunes introduces us to Laura, a recent college grad and aspiring musician, who moves in with her best friend, Callie, in New York City. Music drives the lives of her characters, but you almost wouldn’t know that from the lack of musicality to Gould’s prose. But her approach to writing about music leaves much to be desired. Gould’s writing comes to life when revealing the intricacies of a mother-daughter relationship, as it does extensively in the latter two of the book’s three parts. Emily Gould’s second novel, Perfect Tunes, is nothing short of frustrating.
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